The Sacred Art of Eating

A Mini Mexican Fiesta and not a Burrito or a Fajita in sight!

• Chopped Ceviche and Mexicola
• Mexican Chicken Salad with Tomato and Black Bean Salsa
• Margarita Ice Cream
• Buñuelos

And if four recipes from the Speedy Gonzales chapter is not an undertaking enough, we also cooked (for a second time!) the Roquamole (previously cooked here) and the Sweetcorn Chowder with Toasted Tortillas (see here) in order to ensure the vegetarians in our party didn’t end up with ‘Fish on Toast with No Fish’ followed by ‘Chicken Salad with no Chicken’.

First up were dips and canapes with Mexicola- tequila and coke with a fancy name.

Believe it or not, with enough lime in the glass tequila is quite palatable and certainly slipped down with the fishy fancies quite a treat. These little toastadas topped with fish were excellent. The fish (monkfish in our case) is steeped in lime juice to denature the proteins (that’s cooking, in lay terms!) and then mixed up with lots of coriander and chilli and served on the finest bread your boyfriend will provide (toasted up with olive oil). Not only did these look very sophisticated they tasted smashing. The monkfish wasn’t cheap from the fishmongers but for a starter for eight (with roquamole on the side) it wasn’t extortionate. Perhaps it would be worth seeking out a cheaper substitute if you wanted to do this on a larger scale.

For the main we served up steaming bowls of the Sweetcorn Chowder with Toasted Tortillas and a huge Mexican Chicken Salad with Black Bean Salsa. The soup wasn’t as good as I’d remembered it being. This may be because we simply didn’t have a big enough pan to cook it all in, so in the end I didn’t add the full complement of veggie stock and consequently it was a bit thicker than it ought to have been! I still enjoyed it, but previously I’d remembered it being really good. The chicken salad was okay, but again not particularly something I’ll come back to. We hadn’t sourced the magic ingredient, jicama, a hard mexican vegetable like a cross between an apple and a turnip. In the end we used a mixture of two of the suggested subsitutions, Granny Smith apples and water chestnuts. I think this was the source of the problem I had with it. The appley flavour pushed me too far in the direction of Waldorf Salad; I kept expecting walnuts to appear and they didn’t! Otherwise, my main complaint was that there wasn’t nearly enough lettuce in it.

We nearly served this dish as our main course in its own right and it was only fears of my vegetarian best friend being hard done by that swayed us; I’m awfully glad as I think this salad would have been a bit of a let down on its own. On the other hand, the topping for this salad (what kind of salad needs a garnish?) was powy and wonderful and will be revisited. The black bean and tomato salsa was very straightforward to make yet had very deep flavours going on- the rich pulses against the fresh tomato worked particularly well. This was very hot, and yet should have been hotter- it hadn’t even crossed my mind that doubling up the quantities would mean I’d need more than a jar of red jalapeño peppers. If I made it again I’d probably rein the chilli in a bit, although perhaps not much. This was really, really good and if I were looking for salsa to go with tortilla chips and a dvd, or to serve with fajitas I’d certainly pull this one out. Crikey, with a good dollop of sour cream it’d practically be a fajita filling in its own right!

After this feast we all had to sit for a bit! There was no way any of us were ready for pudding. However this provided ample opportunity to decorate the blackboard with a suitably Mexican theme. Despite it being many moons ago now, this party was actually a birthday celebration for me, and our guests did us proud with their Mexican Halloween costumes. Sadly D and I were so busy cooking that our outfits were somewhat lacking (D hadn’t been able to source facepaint so in the end he didn’t even bother getting changed!) but we had managed a little Mexican decoration- some awesome cards with mexican art; genuinely mexican candles and also some candles in the shape of cactii- and even some real cactii to complement! Perhaps the piece-de-resistance was our decorating our Clip Clock with a colourful array of chillies….looks fab!

For pudding we pulled out some frankly gorgeous Margarita Ice Creams. Dougal served these very elegantly, a single scoop in the bottom of a martini glass, decorated with a sprinkle of lime zest. The portions could have been bigger, but that far into our fiesta we did not need more! (Better still, the small portions mean there is still some of this in the freezer!)

Then we moved on to coffee, alongside which we served little sweet doughballs called buñuelo. These ought probably have been deep fried at the point of serving but we were nervous about doing so in front of our guests, after we’d been drinking etc, and so we’d prepared them in advance. Neither Dougal or I felt we’d got the oil temperature quite right as they seemed to come out overly brown on the outside, but nevertheless these got wolfed down by our friends. I suppose if you don’t have an idea of how a think ought to taste you are easier to please!

All in, a really groovy birthday tea. Great friends, some great costumes, and some great food along the way.

A very special meal in honour of two very special friends who have recently got engaged to be married.

• Potato Cakes with Smoked Salmon
• Lamb Shanks with Beans
• Blackberries in Muscat Jelly

We kicked off with a little non-Nigella, a round of Bellinis made with some posh Peach Nectar my parents had bought me.    The starter was potato cakes topped with smoked salmon and served with some ice cold Polish wodka. The potato cakes were made with Smash, of all things, but you mustn’t let that put you off. The mixture was a bit thick to dollop and it was therefore hard to judge whether the potato cakes were the right size. However they cooked up a treat and tasted fantastic. Fabulous Rory then stepped into the kitchen for a bit of dancing round the cooker but also to array the salmon and dill atop the pancakes. In the end we used half of the salmon called for but the amount seemed just right when we were eating them.          We couldn’t source enough shot glasses to go round and so half of us had our vodka from espresso cups! I had been prepared to grimace as I knocked my vodka back but was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy the combination. Clearly, served properly cold and with suitable accompaniment, vodka can be tasty!

The main course was Lamb Shanks with Tuscan Beans. Super Rory had braved the foul weather on Saturday to pick up happy lamb from the Farmers Market and then cycled it down to us in order that we could get it marinating. (Not only did he pick it up but he then refused to accept any payment for it. A truly gentlemanly gesture and greatly appreciated.)    These roasted up a treat and made the kitchen cosy and rich-smelling. We served a multi-coloured tomato salad on the side, layers of red and yellow tomatoes- some from Carluke, home of the great DI Drain- presented beautifully in the glass bowl I bought for the Quail with Layered salad which has served me well since. These added a juicy freshness alongside the earthy rich flavours of the meat and beans. A blob of my mother’s finest redcurrant jelly on the side and we were truly spoiled!

Pudding was something particularly special. I was really excited when K&B chose this part of the menu (I’d given them lots of menu options and they made the final selection)  as the dish in question not only appealed greatly to me, but deserved a properly special occasion. I am indebted to K&B for providing me with such an occasion.Blackberries in Muscat Jelly included another Nigella Express-led first for me; cooking with leaf gelatine.

The Muscat wine is heated up with vanilla sugar; the pre-soaked sheets of gelatine are melted with some hot wine and  then the whole lot is mixed together to give your jelly mixture. After a little cooling the jelly was poured over the fruit (much like the West Barns Primary School Dinner Hall only without the tinned pears) in posh glasses. At this stage I noticed lots of little bubbles collecting round the edges of the brambles. Not only did these spoil the aesthetic (I knew they’d burst before the photoshoot) but every good microbiologist knows that bubbles in your agar get in the way of good growth…they had to go. A bunsen burner I did not have, but I made light work of the pesky blighters with my cook’s blow torch. To think Lawrence mocked me for owning one!

These sat quietly in a carefully emptied fridge (you try fitting eight martini glasses into your fridge!) all afternoon, ready to be pulled out at just the right moment, a ready prepared jug of cream on hand to accompany. We all fell into one of those lovely silences as we ate these.Nigella says they are a very soft set (presumably on account of the alcohol) and during the post-preparation washing up I’d found that the mug I’d melted the gelatine sheets in had a solid lump of jelly at the bottom, so I’d been really worried these wouldn’t set at all. However they were actually as firm as you would expect any jelly to be. A little softer wouldn’t have gone wrong at all- perhaps next time I’d use a tiny bit less gelatine.

We finished up with coffees and M&S chocolates, just the thing. All in all this evening was a fabulous success. Great company (one notable absence but it wasn’t to be,) and fabulous food which will certainly be repeated. Both the potato cakes with salmon (and vodka!) and the blackberry jellies had really good faff : fancy ratios- not too fiddly to make, preparable in advance, and then just amazing at the crucial moment.Good stuff. (With apologies that the post’s been so long coming)

Or at least my dad felt we did. So he created for us a mid-week party.

• A Night Off Nigella

This recipe began with that marvellous cheese, the super stinky yet surprisingly mild époisses, so soft you could pretty much drink it.

It then added some fine bread of our choice/creation: rather than creation we chose to crack open a loaf of my mother’s finest wholemeal bread.

For the required funky red wine I chose something somewhat at random- it was a Spanish red, aged in French barrels and was pretty yummy I have to say. I see from the Wikipedia page for Époisses that we should have served this with a Burgundy or a Sauterne. Oops. That would have saved my blank staring at the wine in Waitrose too! Next time.

There were few other ingredients, but several helpful instructions, including the warning that those sharing genetic material with my mother might find an apron prudent when eating this cheese, which has a consistency not far off that of golden syrup. Wise words!

To accompany this recipe I’d bought two other cheeses. The Doux de Montagne was chosen entirely at random as something a bit unusual; it was, as the name suggests, quite sweet and in fact reminded me a great deal of bouncy cheese. But that’s alright because at one time that was my favourite. The second cheese was a Manchego (hence the steer towards Spanish wine) but just this once I went all out and bought some Membrillo paste too. I’m not sure I’ve had this since I’ve become a quince fan. Let me say I *loved* the combination (who needs bread!) and if my Dad has any quinces to spare this autumn I’ll maybe make him some (I have a recipe) as a thank you for this super super tea.

A tea that I’d been greatly looking forward to but which to my mind, missed the mark.

• Lamb, Olive and Caramelised Onion Tagine
• Ginger Passionfruit Trifle

I’d been looking forward to this tagine as I like olives and I like caramelised onions, and the idea of bringing them both together with succulent slowly cooked lamb to give a rich hearty stew was very appealing. Dougal had already made clear his intention of making another batch of the Bertinet Spicy Moroccan Rolls to go with this dish. We went all out with organic free range Mrs Hamiltons Lamb (diced gigot) bought at the Edinburgh Farmers’ Market and chose family favourite Co Op’s Primitivo Sangiovese to fill the role of ‘75cl bottle red wine’ for the meat to cook in.

We debated for some time whether the cloves of garlic (one head’s worth) should go in peeled or not. The picture in the book suggested unpeeled but I’m sure somewhere else in the book Nigella describes garlic as ‘unpeeled’ so we went with peeled here.

I suspect we were wrong with the garlic as once cooked, this had very little of the range of colours the picture in the book suggested it would. In fact it was pretty much black. Perhaps I’m attributing too much power to garlic skin but I wonder whether it might have sequestered some pigments along the way, allowed a range of colours to shine through.

As you can see above, this stew was also too watery. Perhaps that’s not surprising given that there was a bottle of wine in it, but I think it needed reduced and sauced up a bit. In any case the couscous and chickpeas we served alongside (intentionally quite plain but just a bit dull as far as I was concerned) really failed to soak up all these juices. Nothing about the bits of this dish from the recipe was appetising or appealing to look at. Nor was it especially great on the palate. The lamb was dry (how???) and for all that there were lots of flavours in the mix (cumin, coriander, capers, caramelised onions, garlic!!) this had quite a thin, layer-less flavour. Dull, dry and overly watery.

Thankfully we had D’s scrummy bread which was great for mopping up sauce. We discovered rather too late in the day that we had never replaced the commercial Ras-El-Hanout spice mix he’d used for these previously. After Dougal had a dismal trudge around North/East Edinburgh in the weeing rain with no spice acquiring success, we consulted the internet and made our own spice blend. The over all effect was less potent than with the Bart’s stuff but by no means disappointing. And we had great fun measuring out all the bits! Check out the flickr version of the mix picture to see what each of the colours is.

For pudding we dipped into the Razzle Dazzle fancy-schmancy chapter (and also back into my parent’s booze cupboard) for the Ginger Passionfruit Trifle. I think I’d always meant to make this for my mum and dad as my dad really likes his passionfruit and my mum really likes her trifles: frankly I’m not sorry I didn’t save it for them as it wasn’t a patch on any trifle my mum’s ever made.

Yes, it looked pretty cool. All that passionfruit shining out from the cream. But the madelines, despite a good soaking in Crabbie’s Green Ginger (no Stone’s here, thank you, we’re in Edinburgh) were a bit dry, and, astonishingly for a Nigella recipe, there didn’t seem to be enough cream. The biggest issue, though, was that there was no custard.Whoever heard of a trifle without custard? I know this is Nigella Express, but my mum makes making Bird’s look like no effort at all and I feel quite certain that it would have been absolutely within the spirit of the book to call for a carton of fresh supermarket custard to layer into this. Waitrose fresh vanilla custard is a pudding in its own right (damn you Na for introducing it to us!) and would fit in just nicely here, I’m sure.

So yes, it was bonny. But this trifle was a disappointing end to a frankly below-par meal. My apologies to my poor old best friend from school who had to suffer it as her birthday tea; she and her man were too polite to do anything other than make appreciative noises but I know we could have done better for them. Next time, perhaps.

There came a point where we just couldn’t keep buying all the boozes Nigella asked for. Amaretto is a drink neither of us have much desire to drink, but I knew some was hiding in my parents’ booze cupboard.

• Coq au Riesling
• Amaretto Syllabub

The occasion of this sweet little supper was a visit from afar (Aberdeen) of Em & El. Such glamorous guests have not graced Leith Walk for some time! (I might be kidding, I might not. You just don’t know!)

We started out with Coq au Riesling, Nigella’s very pared back version of the Retro Classique. Again, this used chicken thigh meat and again, the effect was juicy and tender and gorgeous. We served it with buttered pappardelle (as akin to Alsation ‘noodles’ as I could envisage) and slurped it all up. There was quite a bit left over which I have frozen; I am VERY much looking forward to the day I get to come home to this.

Pudding felt properly fancy and I suppose that really, it was. Amaretto syllabub, using the specially requisitioned Amaretto and lined with amaretti morbidi (soft amaretti biscuits) from the fab Sicilian shop up the hill, then served in our lovely martini glasses with a couple of amaretti on the side.

The folks round the table took a lot of convincing that these weren’t seriously alcoholic. In fact there was only 20ml of Amaretto per person, so barely a shot. However, clearly in melding with the cream this stuff increased in potency…you would not want to try and eat two of these! We all fell into something of a stupor after pudding and couldn’t be perked up even with a pot of tea! Glamorous, but no stamina, what can I say?

If my mum and dad are very lucky I might just make this down at theirs one day!

Despite us both being very sluggish and under the weather this week (expected recipe count for the whole week, a rather sorry two) we haven’t taken the opportunity to try out the Hot Toddies in the Christmas chapter. Perhaps this is why it has taken us so long to recover!

Either way, I feel distinctly better this evening so on Saturday will sit down and plan out some decisive cooking action for the coming week. All is not yet lost!

An indoor picnic on a gorgeous October Saturday.

• Buttermilk Roast Chicken
• New Orleans Coleslaw
• Cloudy Lemonade for a Sunny Day
• Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Former flatmate O2 was back in Edinburgh for one last half a day (in fact we’d been out the night before for food and drinks) so it was time for a good meal as a send off. It had to be lunch, but that was fine as this trio from the lunch chapter were crying out to be done together. I was sad I’d missed the chance to do them on a summers day but October pulled a blinder and produced a nicer day than I remember us having any weekend this summer.

The roast chicken and the coleslaw go together, not least of all as to make them together uses exactly two standard cartons of buttermilk. However, I feel certain that greek yog would be a fine substitute, certainly in the coleslaw and almost certainly for the chicken. Both also had maple syrup in the mix which added a faint hint of sweetness without dominating. The chicken was gorgeously succulent and is shaping up to be pretty good cold the next day too.

We served with this Cloudy Lemonade for a Sunny Day- a sort of bog standard home made lemonade except that the addition of sparkling water made it slightly fizzy. Dougal and I had joked that we would re-brand it Sunny Lemonade for a Cloudy day but in fact this was not necessary. We had trouble making this- even in very small batches (less than max volumes) this made my food processor leak. In the end we blitzed up the lemons with no water, and then mixed it all together at the end. I felt that ultimately whilst this looked the part, it was basically lacking in both lemon and sugar- i.e. it was a little too much like plain fizzy water! It would probably be fine on a really hot day if you were dead thirsty but as an accompaniment to a meal it was lacking. So while I might use fizzy water again, I’ll stick to the old recipes, thanks.

For pudding we swung into Retro mode and knocked up a classic Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. It is testament to how express a recipe this is (generally, not just Nigella’s version I feel sure) that I was able to put this together and bake it between the main course and eating it, and without it really feeling like we were all being kept waiting. Dougal and I managed to get it out of the tin without disaster and it basically looked the part.

It tasted much as you would expect- pineappley on the bottom, the glacé cherries as red and garish as ever. (I could have bought posh non-traffic light glacé cherries in Waitrose but it wouldn’t have been the same!) The sponge was light and tasty although I think I would have preffered there to have been a bit more of it. Still, a light pudding was welcome after such a scrummy meal.

A step outside our comfort zone, with limited success.

• Liver with Bacon and Charred Onions

I don’t mind liver. It is something I remember eating regularly if not at all often as a child. Both liver and kidneys featured on our menus and I don’t recall them seeming especially unusual. My dad particularly likes one of them, although I can’t remember which (perhaps it’s both!). Dougal, on the other hand, does not care for liver. I think he has probably only eaten it a handful of times in his life (chicken liver salad earlier in the year, for example) and finds the texture most off-putting. This meal was always going to be a challenge to pull off. I bought chocolate eclairs for pudding as insurance.

For what it’s worth I think this was quite a nice recipe. The liver was cooked in garlic oil that had previously had both bacon and onions cooking in it. The soft, slightly charred onions were themselves cooked in garlicky bacon fat. I took Nigella’s suggestion of a Radicchio salad as best I could with a bag of waitrose Italian salad dressed with a simple balsamic dressing and a generous scattering of pomegranate seeds (yum!)  which I felt was a nice juicy fresh contrast to the strong flavours of the meat and onions.

I probably over-crisped the bacon- it was more like pork scratching and didn’t, I felt, add much (apart from lots of flavour to the pan!) but otherwise this was all right. I was starving at tea time and so this filled a hole most satisfactorally. We probably won’t revisit it but equally if I were to meet a liver fan, I might point them in the direction of this dish. Can’t be ravingly foody enthusiastic all the time, it seems.

I should like to remind those of you, lurking, and I know you exist, that commenting is positively encouraged. Like what you see? Let me know. I have oft likened myself to a small wet springer spaniel. Pat me on the head and my tail wags away happily!

The second birthday of the year, and yet again, ice cream and peanut fudge sauce had a starring role.

• Prawns with Maryam Zaira Sauce
• Red-Leaf, Fig and Serrano Ham Salad (this time with Figs!)
• Lamb Cutlets with Chilli and Black Olives
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Sundae

Well, it was my birthday. What was I going to do apart from invite some good friends round and cook for them till we all burst?

I’d aimed to start with Scallops-on-the-Shell but the fishmongers of Leith let me down. Instead I bought in a truckload of prawns with their tails on, fanned them out all pretty in my Phil Revells (last birthday’s present) and gave everyone pots of Maryam Zaira sauce to dunk in. Dougal provided faintly saffron-y bread and all in all it was a grand wee starter.

Main course saw us re-visit a salad that we made way back when on the 1st of January. However, at the time we were missing a key ingredient- the Figs! Right now they are in season and there are heaving shelves of them in Waitrose. I was really impressed by how they brought this salad together- a lump of fig flesh with some serrano ham is a gloriously sweet and salty combination.

The high point of the main course was an awesome feast of tasty garlicky (oh my!) chilli seasoned lamb cutlets- 12 in all- fried on the hob. I was really impressed that this didn’t fill the kitchen (and my guests) up with smoke. We left the meat marinading while we ate our first course and then I set to frying whilst the table got re-organised and folks chatted away.

For pudding I pulled out the big guns. I’d commissioned ice cream from AC’s granddad (he makes it for her parent’s chippie and Italian restaurant) and thus, as much as a birthday present to myself as as a grand dessert for my guests, I was able to serve up the Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Sundaes. These were wonderful; the salted peanuts on top really worked a treat and the three types of ice cream were definitely necessary. The only thing that wasn’t necessary was my doubling the volumes for the Peanut Butter Fudge Sauce. We had far too much- the amount specified for four sundaes would surely have done the trick. Sadly this means poor Dougal and I are on left-overs duty all week. It’s a hard life.

In other exciting news I got some heart shaped cookie cutters for my birthday so at least one more recipe is now in our sights! My parting shot is Nick, illustrating the theme of Ice Cream Sundae through the medium of interpretive dance…