The Sacred Art of Eating

Apologies for the radio silence. Dougal and I are currently without internet in the flat. Believe you me, it hurts us more than it hurts you. All this should change on Saturday…watch this space.

Quite exquisite spouse torture is possible when you fill the kitchen with amazing sweet cooking smells and then take the whole lot to work….

• Rocky Road Crunch Bars

Thankfully for Dougal, I am not like that, and when I made Rocky Road Crunch Bars for my work I made sure to leave him a generous portion at home, as well as some of the banana xxx-chip muffins I made at the same time. (I’d finally sourced some white chocolate chips which were suggested for the muffins but I think in the end I preferred the dark choc chips. However I have some butterscotch nuggets I got from my Italian Connection so I will try the authentic version soon too!) On the other hand, at his recent birthday Dougal made flapjack, banana bread and chocolate gingerbread for his work colleagues (it’s traditional, apparently) and left me none at all to take for my lunch. Let me tell you it all smelled amazing as it was cooking- and all I got was a little in the way of banana bread left-overs and some of the ginger bread trimmings. Not fair!

I made these goodies for work as a sort of ’send off’ when I went off for a few days to do the move to the new flat. Part of the excuse was ‘using up’ things in the cupboards but really I just wanted to make goodies!

I’d go as far as to say that the Rocky Road was among the best I have ever tasted. It needed a higher total marshmallow content, and to be made with properly ‘mini’ mini marshmallows- these were merely on the wee side. Also, next time I will remember to reserve some of the chocolate mixture to top it with, as I think this would make for a more professional finish.

My only reservation about this scrummy snack (it was amazing when we were weary with house moving, let me tell you!) was that it was blimen impossible to cut when you took it out of the fridge. This might be improved upon by letting it warm up a bit first but I’m not sure.

This recipe looked so good in the book, but somehow didn’t come together as it should have.

• Smoked Cod and Cannellini

I was having my best friend from high school over for supper before the two of us went out to see a French film. This dish seemed like the sort of elegant straightforward supper a chic girl might serve to her chic girlfriend, clink some rosé spirtizer over and generally be effortlessly cool with. What follows is the first recipe in the book and I was really looking forward to eating it.

I didn’t follow the recipe to the letter- I was, believe it or not, nervous cooking without Dougal about- and I think this may be why this turned out a bit wet and unappealing. The fish is poached with white wine and celery and bay leaves and so on, then removed and the beans warmed through in a small volume of the poaching liquid. Rather than measure the ‘about 60ml’ suggested I went with the visual ‘enough to cover the beans’ and probably over estimated. This left a lot of wetness behind, as well as lots of peppercorns. These got everywhere and made eating the dish anything but elegant- we kept having to pause to fish them out of our mouths.

Altogether I felt let down by this dish; it was neither as pretty nor as easy to eat as the recipe suggested. Ach, I suppose Nigella Express can’t be the wünder-buch all the time, can it?

Yes, it has been very quiet here. I have been rather busy. We have been cooking, but often not blogging. There has been the small (but painful) matter of a lack of internet connection (yours at a cost of £19.50 a month!).

However, there is a new post for you below, and there will be a new post for you tomorrow (I can say this with some certainty as I have already written it) and there may even be a further new post for you on Thursday. Just now though I have to get back to writing change of address cards, or *some* of you will no doubt complain!

An almost-restaurant-posh main and a pudding reminiscent of childhood sweeties; contrasting but fabulous, and most of all over a month ago!

• Tuna Steaks with Black Beans
• Rhubarb and Custard Gelato

This meal has the dubious distinction of being one that I cooked whilst absolutely sozzled (under the watchful eye of two dashing young men, I might add!). We had gone out after work to celebrate members of my lab getting permanent posts. I’d said I’d only have one…that turned into three and then I got a phone call from Dougal saying ‘Rory is already here and you have all the food so shift!’… at which point I giggled my way home.Nevertheless the meal was a resounding success; affirmation if ever it were needed that the recipes in Nigella Express are easy peasy. The tuna steaks were just thrown on the hot griddle, requiring so little time to cook that in fact you needed to prepare your plates before hand. The black beans, straight from a can then tossed in a garlicky limey dressing were gorgeous and a stylish instant salad that I will repeat. As suggested I’d made some slow roast tomatoes the night before; these added liquid to the dish which alongside the fish and beans was important and I was sad I’d not made more (but I’d not had the foresight to buy lots of tomatoes in).The final touch was the application of a lime wedge on the plate. I wouldn’t have bothered, even though it was in the illustration in the book, but the poor plates looked half full without them. Brilliant.

Pudding sounds quite grand but was basically Rhubarb and Ice Cream. However it shouldn’t take much to convince you all that Rhubarb and Ice Cream is a pudding fit for kings and thus deserving of a grand name. I served it in whisky tumblers which looked okay but not as pretty as the sundae glasses in the book. I should very much like to know how Nigella managed to make hers so pink though- not real rhubarb I don’t think!