The Sacred Art of Eating

A school friend was making a flying visit to Scotland this weekend, and kindly agreed to let us cook for her and some other old friends.

• Broccoli and Stilton Soup
• Festive Fusilli
• Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc

All three recipes out of the Christmas chapter, and why not, I’m starting to feel festive. We didn’t quite get Tijuana Christmas out (sorry, Gem, I had to link!) because we don’t have our decorations up get, but I was feeling a bit Christmassy last night.

The soup was a little disappointing to be honest. In the book it looks, and is described as being thick and inviting. Ours was a bit on the thin side- you can see in the pictures that the garnish of chilli sank right in! On the other hand the broccoli flavour was lovely and fresh, although the stilton was a bit too far in the background for my tastes. This was so easy to make though, so perhaps I’ll repeat the effort, but tinker with the stock and cheese proportions to oomph the final product up a bit.

The main course was far more successful, for me at least, and it’s all I can do just now not to run to the kitchen and nom the leftovers. Festive Fusilli is a straightforward tomatoey pasta dish with the added touch of some vodka and mascarpone. The ’sun blush’ toms (some whole, some chopped up) are steeped in the vodka (and herbs, sugar and salt) from the beginning, which was nice as I was able to get all that ready in advance, and just put the pasta on to cook while we ate the starter. When the pasta was ready, you stir through the mascarpone and the steeping tomatoes, and serve with lots of parmesan and parsley. To my mind, fantastico- richly tomatoey but also slightly creamy. I couldn’t really tell what the vodka added but perhaps it was a subtle nuance we’d have missed had it not been there. The only downside to this dish was that both Gem and Shona left quite a pile of whole tomatoes on their plate- clearly I need to spend more time with them both to get a better idea of their tastes!

My only sadness with the pasta was that I didn’t bring it to the table in a big steaming serving dish. That would’ve felt very festive and homey but I was having containment issues merely mixing the pasta and flavours in the pan, so it probably would have been dangerous folly to have attempted to have transferred the lot to another dish to take it to the table!

Pudding was nearly a disaster; at one point I considered abandoning it altogether, and it was only that it was already half made at that stage that kept me from giving up. The Quickly Scaled Mont Blancs comprise layers of: finely chopped dark chocolate; sweetened chestnut purée; whipped cream with broken meringue and then a final dusting of meringue shard.

I’d picked up a teeny tiny tin of sweetened chestnut purée months ago- possibly before we even began the challenge!- in a deli that was on my walk to work before we moved. However, to do this recipe for seven I needed a full-sized tin. I’d not had time through the week, so on Saturday afternoon skipped off to the deli to pick up more. To my horror and surprise, the deli has (in December) given up opening on Saturdays.

Visions of no pudding danced before my eyes. I’d previously had an alternative but it was too late in the day to make it, as cooling time was required. On a hunch, I tried Harvey Nicks, and to my joy, there it was! Clement de Faugier purée des marrons!

It wasn’t until after I’d chopped the chocolate and arrayed it in the glasses, and whipped the cream to a light and floppy mix, that I noticed that I’d bought unsweetened purée. It was nothing, in fact, apart from chestnuts and water. Not only that, but it was set solid, unlike the little tin which had the consistency of glossy ketchup. Firstly I contemplated sweetening up the purée myself. It was just rock solid though (and thoroughly unappealing smelling, which is odd as I do actually like chestnuts!) and there was no way it would combine with sugary syrup. The guests were due, I panicked a bit, and then contemplated giving up on pudding altogether. I’d just serve ice cream and chocolate sauce and it would be fine.

But I already had glasses with chocolate rubble in them. And a bowl of whipped cream. So I decided to make do. Each glass got a rounded teaspoon of the proper chestnut paste (about a sixth of what each glass ought to have had) and then I layered on the cream as normal.

And it was just fine. I think a little more chestnut wouldn’t have gone amiss- you couldn’t always taste it- but we agreed that six times as much might in fact have been too much! I think I’d aim for about double next time, perhaps two heaped teaspoons each, or one 100g tin for four puddings. Despite the various moments of agony these desserts were elegant and tasty- not so much a quick scaling as a send out search and rescue sort of event, but well worth it in the end. Hurrah!

And Dougal had a cold. And I was cold. The only sensible option was to try out the following recipe.

• Hot Toddy

To my mind a hot toddy is firmly made with whisky, most probably Grouse. I’ve had a toddy made with Malt before, when there was nothing else to be had, and it was pretty special too, but a waste of the good stuff and an expensive habit to get into!

Nigella, however, calls for bourbon for these toddies, with rum as an alternative. I don’t own any bourbon; it’s all pretty expensive and I wouldn’t want to spend that kinda money without some authoritative advice. Nigella is a fan though- more than once she implore readers to get in some bourbon- so perhaps one day I will try it out.

Despite being made with the wrong spirit these hit all the right hot toddy buttons. Warm and spicy. Perhaps not enough lemon, but the curl of lemon zest held together with a clove ’stud’ added a zing as you drank down the glass.

Perhaps my only complaint would be that these were a bit small. Total volume of 130ml meant these drinks would’ve looked lost in a mug, so I served them in glasses (sadly not fancy hot drink glasses!) but really they could’ve done with being a bit bigger. Winter is a time of indulgences after all!

Sunday proved to be the first hot day of the year. As such an informal and laid-back dinner was called for.

• Halloumi Bites (this time with pictures!)
• Mexican Scrambled Eggs
• Irish Cream Tiramisu

The sharp-eyed and keen-witted amongst my readers will recall that we did, in fact, make the halloumi bits right back at the beginning of the challenge; the first ‘friends for dinner evening’. However, at the time we forgot to take any piccies, and seeing as we’d both enjoyed it so much felt quite prepared to cook it again ‘in the interests of completeness’.

This time it was made with bona fide garlic oil, as opposed to just some garlic fried in oil. Presumably this added to the flavours; I think if anything it masked the lime juice and over all this was a little on the greasy side, compared to last time. Perhaps I am just remembering wrongly, of course.

The mexican scrambled eggs were chosen specifically for being a bit of an easy-going sort of dish. Of our guests, Le C we basically just know through blogging (although curiously she is one of my best friends’ best friends!) and we don’t know her boyfriend at all. So Dougal felt an informal tea was called for; no need to get the good china out! On the other hand it was a bit of a gamble; whilst we’d asked them if there was anything they didn’t eat, Dougal and I agreed later that someone could really hate scrambled eggs but never think to mention it if asked!

Between the halloumi and the eggs, this was a ‘make lots of little bowls up in advance and then fry with guests in the kitchen’ sort of meal. Added nicely to the relaxed vibe. For all I talk about liking having folk in the kitchen whilst I cook its not actually something I often do.

Generally the eggs were pretty good. My mum makes awesome curried scrambled eggs, with tomato and spices in it and coriander on it; these eggs were pretty similar but without the curry and with the curious addition of fried strips of tortilla. I’m not sure if these oughtn’t have been a bit crisper- the oil wasn’t really hot enough when we fried them, bloody electric cooker- which might have made them a bit more obvious. As it was they added a bit of structure but I’m sure the dish wouldn’t have been weakened in their absence! As suggested in the pre-recipe blurb (but not as an actual recipe) we made a meal of the eggs by serving frigoles refritos with them. We’d neither of us made really-fried beans before (I’d only ever had them out of a can before) but we can report that made with tinned borlotti beans (soak overnight?…hah!) they are quick to make and most hearty and satisfying.

Pudding was chosen specifically for Le C, as the dish that pretty much got her through fourth year of her Part One in Architecture. She used to blog about it on regular occasion. I’d forgotten, but D had spotted the recipe in the book and said we have to make that for Le C. Whilst it tasted absolutely delicious and had the decency to serve beautifully and not fall apart on application of a spoon, as previously noted the proportions in the recipe seemed all wrong. We are currently eating our way through the remaining sponge fingers (very nice they are too) and you saw what happened to the coffee and baileys! Thing is, it’s not just that there was too much, as we ran out of mascarpone at about the point we would have expected. We probably could have soaked the sponge fingers a little more too, but not enough to use all that coffee mixture up!

Either way, it worked out very well, and was also most acceptable the following day when we invited HarveyNick over to help us polish off the leftovers.

I realised whilst preparing this meal that, for the course of this challenge, my friends will have to learn that “just supper, nothing fancy” only goes as far as to mean we’ll be wearing jeans, and they won’t be given cocktails. Beyond that, anything goes.

• Halloumi Bites
• Moonblush Tomatoes, and
• Slow-roast Tomatoes, Goat’s Cheese and Mint Salad
• Pollo alla Cacciatora
• Budino di Cioccolato
• Chocolate Macaroons

Two friends for supper, to really grasp the challenge by the horns, and to get some recipes under my belt as insurance for the working week ahead. I think managing five (six!) was pretty good going. The only pre-planned part of the meal was the salad, which you can currently see gracing the banner of this blog. I’d bought the special soft goat’s cheese on the 31st, intending to make this salad for my folks on New Year’s Day, but then I forgot to put the tomatoes on to cook in advance.

Not to be beaten a second time, I merrily (very!) prepared the tomatoes on Friday night, a little after 1am, after we got back from Fife. Easy peasy- heat the oven up, slice toms in half, sprinkle with good things, bung in oven, turn oven off, go to bed. I was concerned that the measurements were going to be a problem- I would personally have used half as much salt and twice as much olive oil- but decided to Trust Nigella.

The following evening, I scattered my salad leaves on the plate, dolloped about the goats cheese, and arrayed the now Moonblushed Tomatoes. Instant show-off salad!

(Instant- apart from the mint. My local supermarket failed me on fresh herbs. Thankfully our guests were able to bring us some and I’m really glad I decided to ask, as the mint really lifted the flavours and added that important je ne sais qois.)

All the other dishes were chosen on the basis of what I might feasibly find ingredients for in our local, small and grotty supermarket. I’ll pretend that I was doing the cooking in the true Express ethos, but actually I just couldn’t be bothered shopping the day before and left it till two hours before our friends arrived. Perhaps that is the true Express ethos anyway. I chose reasonably well too, seeing as the only ingredients I couldn’t get were the aforementioned fresh mint, and some fresh rosemary for the Pollo alla Cacciatora.

The Hunter’s Chicken was nice enough, but no great shakes. We had (over-)faithfully followed the recipe with Dougal boning chicken thighs for fillets (it was the only way I could get free range chicken, and anyway the recipe called for thigh fillets. The bones and skin will make great stock!). Nigella describes this as a dish she can construct from scratch in comfortably under half an hour; we had more time and so cooked it for longer, reasoning that no stew ever suffered a bit of slow simmering. It was nevertheless a bit thin (needed reduced) and just not very exciting. But I reckon I’d be happy enough with it after a lousy day at work, so I’ll not write it off altogether.

Perhaps the chicken seemed dull because it had followed on from such a fabulous starter. A starter which I’ve just realised I took no photos of; damn, I’ll just have to cook it again. Halloumi is one of my favourite nibbley foods, in the whole world and there are TWO recipes using it in this book. This was dead straightforward: dry fry your cheese and then toss it in citrus juices, oil and herbs. My only complaint was that I couldn’t eat the whole lot myself.

For pudding we served Budino di Cioccolato with Chocolate Macaroons; the macaroons use the two egg whites left over from the egg yolks that go into the choccy pots. I nearly didn’t make the macaroons, thinking them unnecessary additional effort, but the fact that they only need baked for 11 minutes spurred me into action. I’m glad I did as they were perfect; chewy and chocolatey and really good for dipping into the pots. I don’t feel so glowing about the Budino themselves, despite them turning out really well. Perhaps this is the fault of our lousy electric cooker, or perhaps it was the recipe, but Nigella’s cooking and whisking for about 3-4 minutes until the mixture thickens took well over half an hour for me. This took me firmly out of Express zone and into argh, why am I wasting so much time making sure the pudding doesn’t burn (the macaroons were finished and out of the oven by this point). I would also quibble with the illustration on the book, which was clearly taken before the things had been chilled. Mine weren’t quite so exquisitely shiny, but I think my take on her serving suggestion was pretty funky, in a cute and modern way.

A flat-warming party with a delightful theme, and an opportunity to try out two further recipes:

• Marshmallow Crispy Squares
• Party Popcorn
• Wok oil (ish)

The crispy squares were a cinch to make; we couldn’t get mini-marshmallows but found that full sized ones worked equally well. The advice regarding using vinyl gloves to push the mix into the tin was greatly received (not least of all because we had some of said gloves) as this is one sticky mixture. We didn’t have time to order edible disco glitter online, and being the 3rd of January, our local cake decorating shop wasn’t open. So our sparkle came from a jar of , and, whilst rather more Clyde built than Nigella’s efforts, fitted the bill perfectly.

The party popcorn was also a big hit. In essence you cook your popcorn as normal but in some tasty oil* and the, once popped, shake it in a paper bag with a spicy melted butter mix. We wondered at the actual need for the paper bag, but decided that a less substantial bag might stick to itself and prevent the spice mix from being distributed through the popcorn. As it was we could have done with a warm paper bag (or something!) as lumps of the buttery sugary spice solidified rapidly on the paper, which was a shame. However, whilst on first munch the popcorn was a bit too subtle, my hand kept going back to it…ultimately, this one was a hit with me! We made half quantities, for the party we were going to, and I’m sure it wasn’t finished. I can’t imagine the scale of party Nigella herself is catering for!

*Whilst I didn’t go so far as to make actual Wok Oil for this recipe, infusing garlic and ginger in a sesame and vegetable oil mix for 48 hours, I prepped the oil before I went to work. I threw some veggie oil and a bit of sesame oil into a jug, crushed in a clove of garlic and grated in some fresh ginger. It won’t have been as powwy as it ought to have been but I’m sure it will have made a difference, contributed to the general ’savoury’ flavour. Once I’ve bought some nice bottles I’ll make up all three of the infused oils properly.