The Sacred Art of Eating

So, what was I up to? Well my dear friend Ari  is leaving our team at work to join our sister lab, and these were a little homage to her in her last week.

Ariana lives in the ‘burbs, and is very attached to her car, which causes problems when she heads out to be seen in Edinburgh’s stylish cocktail venues. If she has the car, she’ll have a raspberry vodka and lemonade at the beginning of the night, and nothing thereafter. So, in her honour, these cakes are called

Just the one for me, thanks, I’ve got the car!

The cakes are lemony, with a rasp or two hidden inside; the icing is buttercream coloured and flavoured with the juice of half a dozen or so rasps pushed through a sieve. Makes for a rather soft buttercream, but that’s okay. I prefer not to eat hard icing anyway.

I adapted the recipe for the Orange, Raspberry and Yoghurt Cupcakes for these, although along the way I was very much inspired by Alauna’s Lemon-Raspberry cupcakes.  As you can probably tell I attempted to emulate the look of hers, although I should probably have stretched the batter to 18 rather than 12 cakes, to give flatter tops, if I’d wanted the elegance of hers. I’d also not handled a piping bag in about ten years, so my icing was verging on the pink poo! Practice makes perfect I guess.

I decided against a hidden blob of raspberry jam as I only have a little of my mum’s excellent jam from last year left- I didn’t want to finish it all up on cupcakes for other people. And it’s lost its intense red colour with age so I thought it might let the aesthetic down, even though it still tastes wonderful. However as I said, these cakes are still in beta, so perhaps the next attempt will take the rasps *out* of the cake and put some jam *into* the cake.

There was also the discussion of whether, to be truly authentic, there ought perhaps be a single shot of raspberry vodka in the icing. My concern is that at the moment it tastes wonderfully fresh and natural and the vodka might push it into the synthetic. (I’m sure Absolut will lynch me for suggesting their Raspberry Vodka is made with synthetic flavourings, but you know what I mean!)

Annoyingly I didn’t take any pics of the fully iced batch, and despite a great deal of care being taken one or two did fall over in the tin on the bus to work on Thursday, after which they were not so photogenic. And there are none left. So you will just have to imagine their over all glory. Perhaps version 0.2 will be fully catalogued from conception to execution!

It’s been a year since I finished The Challenge. I spent lots of time last year saying ‘this will definitely be cooked again’- so, one year on, what have we gone back to?

• Red Prawn and Mango Curry -a great many meals inspired by this, as well as ‘proper’ repeats.
• Caramel Croissant Pudding – about three times! Including just last night, in celebration of the acquisition of some bourbon.
• Rhubarb and Custard Gelato – when I found some pink rhubarb, and I even blogged about it!
• Steak Slice with Lemon and Thyme -at least once!
  
• Flourless Chocolate Brownies, and
• Hot Chocolate Sauce -when my cousin and her man came for dinner. Very well received :o)
  
• Goujons of Sole with Dill Mayonnaise- I am fairly sure we did this but perhaps without any dill. But I remember frying!
• Mango Split
• Home-made Instant Pancake Mix, – absolutely loads. It is our standard recipe for ‘breakfast’ pancakes now. We even did it for D’s parents and Granny on Christmas morning this year.
• Blueberry Syrup for Pancakes- sometimes, but not always, when we make the above. Ridiculously easy, ridiculously good!
• Maple Chicken ‘n’ Ribs- still can’t get them as sticky as I want. Still meaty and good.
• Moonblush Tomatoes
• High-Speed Hamburger with Fast Fries- fast fries, certainly. Not sure about the burgers.
  
• Tuna Steaks with Black Beans- yup, although we couldn’t get pinto beans in Leith, funnily enough!
• Nectarine and Blueberry Galette-right here!
  
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Sundae- well the sauce anyway. Tis gorgeous!
• Chowder with Asian Flavours
• Rapid Ragù- winter warming fare.
  
• Jumbleberry Crumble
• Doughnut French Toast
• Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies- they don’t hold their own weight though, so are not to be advised for taking to parties!
  
• Potato Cakes with Smoked Salmon- we haven’t re-cooked these. But D bought smoked salmon today. And the night is yet young!
• Duck Breasts with Pomegranate and Mint- again, I have not yet re-cooked. But I do have two duck breasts sitting in the freezer waiting specifically for the right occasion.
• Ice Cream Cake- for a party, it went down very well! So fast, in fact, that I got no pictures of the finished product!
• Mexican Hot Chocolate 1 2 Properly- Essentially whenever we have any kahlua!
  
• Rocky Road Crunch Bars- a LOT
  
• Sesame Peanut Noodles- quick, easy and very satisfying. Plus once you’ve bought beansprouts you might as well make a massive amount.
• Snowball- repeated a couple of times and then it dawned on me, the reason I didn’t rate it was that I don’t like lemonade! How obvious! Dougal has since introduced me to drinking advocaat with ginger ale. Much better!
• Festive Fusilli- is only festive if you serve it at a feast. Otherwise is sunblush tomato, vodka and mascarpone pasta!
• Marshmallow Crispy Squares- at least once. I needed to use the rice crispies up! And they are scrummy.
• Garlic Oil- eventually it dawned on me to use a food processor to cut the garlic up. We need a new bottle now, in fact.
• Salade Niçoise- even with the inclusion of anchovies!

17% repeat rate. I predicted at least 10 at dinner tonight, so I suppose I’m not wrong. Looking through the list tonight it is clear that I like making sweet things! I think the recipes we repeated were probably more representative of low-faff rather than those recipes we were most excited about last year. This might be because the biggest surprises came from recipes I would never normally have bothered with before…and which apparently I am not inclined to go back to! A revision of the list tonight was good though- now I have some fresh ideas for 2010!

Finally made these, after holding out in vain for an elusive ingredient.

• Lunchbox Treats

Nigella calls for one of those ‘London Ingredients’ in this recipe; Rice Malt Syrup. It’s made by Clearspring (presumably amongst others) and Waitrose stock lots of Clearspring products: no joy. You also get Clearspring in various Hippy Shops but we had no joy there either. Internet-fu suggested Asian Supermarkets but they looked at us like we were a little crazy. The end of December was looming, so we died a little inside and just went with Golden Syrup.

Let me tell you, Rice Malt Syrup must have some amazing stick-things-together-whilst-not-sticking-to-you properties. Because Nigella suggests rolling these treats into walnut-shaped balls, which was just not possible for us. I ended up with hands totally coated with sticky cereals, which steadfastly refused to clump together at all. We conceeded defeat and started putting them in petit-four cases and fairy cake cases instead.

The mini treats in the petit-four cases looked brilliant and would be a dainty thing to serve with coffee at the end of a dinner party, not a use I’d thought of for them. However I didn’t get to eat a single one as D took them all to work. The bigger ones, however, were really cracking with a big mug of strong milky coffee. We’ve not quite finished them yet. They taste kinda nutty, which is presumably down to the sesame seeds, and with this far more sophisticated than they ought, being as they are basically crispie cakes. They were easy to make (once we gave up on balling them!) so I’ll probably do these again, the next time we have a bring-a-cake day at work. Perhaps next time I’d supplement the chocolate with some maltesers, to make up for the absence of the malt syrup.

Actually, I would. These were really good!

• Mini Meatloaves

We didn’t make these as early in the year as we might have, as one of the flavourings used to bind the meat together is A1 Steak Sauce. This stuff is readily available in the US and cheap as (stuff you’d put on your) chips; in the UK as far as I can tell it retails at a little under the per litre price of printer ink. A quick look on Google will show you a lot of people looking for it to make Nigella’s Mini Meatloaves (who, me?) but also various ‘Mercans discussing what to use when shipwrecked in Old Blighty and looking for an alternative. HP sauce seems to win, so I duly nicked some sachets from a service station and thus, we were ready.

In the making, these were not so pretty. And let me tell you, I got very cold hands mushing together the mince, sausage meat and egg with the sauce and oats.  It didn’t take long though, and pretty soon these babies were ready for the oven.

The next day, having been up too late to make these into sandwiches, we had them in our tea. We had some baguettes of Dougal’s, and we took Nigella’s advice and had these with pickles, ketchup, mustard, mayo…generally we played around with the flavours. I liked these best with mayo and a fruity chutney while Dougal favoured the gherkin approach. The only downside was that cold meat pieces do not a November supper make, and we ended the meal frozen and seeking a cup of tea.

The following day we repeated the exercise in pitta breads for lunch at work; most respectable. The mushy meat feels a bit like the rubbish you get in packet sandwiches, except in this case it was butcher-bought and hand worked. Not fine or sophisticated eating but very satisfying and an excellent source of protein.

Today we fished a couple of cooked mini meatloaves out of the freezer a couple of hours before lunch. They’d defrosted a treat (we gave them a few mins at 50°C in the oven right at the end, just to be sure) and went delightfully with the spare pain de Campagne left over from the bread Dougal made for our Fondue. We have another six still in the freezer and I’m sure they’ll come in handy for making hearty work lunches when the fridge is looking a bit barren.

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.

There is something of a tradition at my work to do a picnic lunch in the coffee room for anyone leaving. We gave J a particularly fine gastronomic goodbye, I feel! I contributed two dishes.

• Mortadella Pasta Salad
• Crunchy Salad with Hot and Sour Dressing

What a spread there was. I hope I merit such efforts from my colleagues, if/when I leave!

Both the dishes I took were from On the Run, the lunches chapter and both I would eat again for lunch. That said, the crunchy salad would be a bit high faff to make in the morning for lunch for only two- quite a lot of slicing and you have to blanch some of the veg. It also wasn’t quite hot or sour enough for me- I was expecting a really potent kick! More appropriate to put the effort in for a bbq or picnic, I’d have thought.

The mortadella pasta salad was yummy, a dead simple, fairly standard pasta and ham affair with a mustardy dressing. It coped particularly well with my part-making it at home and then assembling it at work. My only gripe would be that I didn’t chop the parsley quite fine enough (perhaps I do need a mezzeluna after all?!?!) but otherwise most satisfactory. I made Dougal a little portion of this on the side as he had most selflessly provided a batch of Spicy Moroccan Rolls for me to take as well.

Lunch looked gorgeous in the book, but would it survive a trip to work?

• Chicken Caesar Cornets

I trusted Nigella on this recipe; these little lunch parcels are made with corn tortillas, not wheat. The filling is a caesary mix of worcestershire sauce, mayo, parmesan, chicken and iceberg lettuce and had a satisfying crunch. At the time of making, they looked pretty cool!

However three of the four corn tortillas cracked on parcelling up and looked pretty sad and flat by the time I got mine to work.

They also really had to be wrapped individually in foil/film, rather than just be put in a sandwich box, which I disapprove of on ecological grounds.

I’d eat the salad again. I might re-try the recipe, with wheat tortillas. But I’d probably roll them as wraps, rather than trying the cornets again. So… just one cornetto!

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.

I had the gals round from work on Monday, and made for tea a simple dish from the lunches chapter, along with an easy but effective pud.

• Sesame Peanut Noodles
• Nectarine and Blueberry Galette

And the good ladies brought me flowers. What stars they are, the lot of them.It is fair to say that a great deal of Nigella Express is not Halal. Particularly when I’d lost my nerve in the halal butcher’s at the weekend (the man behind the counter was all grumpy with me!) and so was essentially looking for a vegetarian recipe; something I’ve bemoaned the lack of in the past. However, approaching the lunches chapter with an open mind presented to me these fabulous sticky noodles which I will certainly be making again.As it is supposed to be a lunch dish and supposed to be made in the morning before eating at a later stage, the noodles were supposed to be pre-cooked (I just used normal ones) and none of the veg is cooked at all. I had misgivings about the raw mange-touts but they were fine. Crunchy and sweet and an important crisp and fresh contrast to the sweet peanut sauce. The sauce comprised peanut butter (Skippy, bought specially for another recipe!), soy sauce, garlic oil and lime juice. There was also supposed to be sweet chilli sauce but I clean forgot about it! We didn’t think it was a glaring omission.

This was pretty tip-top and both D and I enjoyed it for lunch the following day. However I would say that Nigella clearly eats less at lunch than we did at tea, as after five of us had eaten it needed added to in order to spin it out to two further lunches. The recipe said it would give eight portions. Eight not very hungry people.

After we’d crunched and slurped our way through our noodles, I set to on pudding. I could not source ready-rolled all butter puff pastry (and having compared the ingredients of the ‘normal’ puff pastry and the all-butter puff pastry there is no doubt in my mind as to which I ought to buy) so I rolled out my slab of puff pastry; made the little frame and painted on a mixture of apricot jam and cream. It should be noted that apricot jam mixed with cream is a fabulous combination and one I would happily eat very day! This was then scattered with blueberries and nectarine and baked.

Not only did it look foxy it tasted scrummy too. Whilst the nectarine started out under-ripe, once blasted in the oven it was soft and its piquancy was a lovely counter to the sweetness of the base and blueberries. Dougal and I have since agreed that in the future we would use more fruit in this. All round though I would recommend this galette as an easy peasy way of knocking up a most impressive looking pud (but not one for you Mike- this definitely gets away with looking messy!)

One necessary ingredient substitution, but nevertheless a highly sucessful evening’s pudding.

• Banana Butterscotch Muffins

Which were in fact Banana Dark Chocolate Chip Muffins. Even Waitrose couldn’t sell me Butterscotch Morsels. I could’ve gone online; I might yet, one day. However, Ms Lawson suggests dark chocolate chips as a suitable alternative and we would agree, very suitable indeed. If anything I feel they may make a superior muffin. I’m not sure that with butterscotch morsels these wouldn’t be too sweet.

These were dead easy to make and an excellent use of our otherwise completely useless one-week-overripe bananas. They probably count as fairly healthy too, what with being made with vegetable oil, and not a huge amount of sugar (apart from that in the bananas!).

Very yummy and just the sort of thing you could confidently knock up if you had a friend coming round for morning coffee and wanted something easy and reliable to feed them. Technically they are from the Lunch chapter, but that’s fine as we have ample left over (we ended up with 19 instead of the suggested 12 muffins- perhaps because we used fairy cake not muffin cases) and so will be taking them for lunch tomorrow.