The Sacred Art of Eating

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!

The end of an era.

• Scallops-on-the-Shell
• Griddled Venison with Pink Gin Apple Sauce and Roast Pencil Leeks
• Tarte Fine Aux Pommes
• Champagne

A little lunch, to see the Challenge off in a fitting style. Four friends around the table (there were so many more I would have liked to have had there) who had each contributed to the colour and shape of our eating this year, while they may not realise it.

A meal, straight out of the Razzle Dazzle chapter. Champagne to end it all. Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your attention.

Everything tasted wonderful and everything was easy to make.

Helen and Dougal decided to host a glamorous and exclusive cocktail party, with mixed results.

• Green Apple Martini
• Ginger Pom
• The Instant Canapé: Quick Crostini with Avocado and Green Pea Hummus
• Tuna and Crab & Avocado Wraps
• Butterfly Cakes

The plan was to have a short, sharp event - two hours of little nibbles and heady drinks, then a round of butterfly cakes for a finale. That even left time for people to hit the town afterward, should they be up for that kind of thing.

The two cocktails were pretty good, though requiring ingredients that were unusual enough that the local off-licence couldn’t meet our demands. But Peckham’s has quite a serious selection of interesting liqueurs.

By contrast the wraps were pretty disastrous. No matter how clever it sounds, wrapping things in tortillas is a recipe for tears well before bed-time. Not to mention how ridiculously over-filled the wraps would have been if we’d followed the recipe exactly. I was liberally applying cocktails sticks through all angles of rolled tortilla in an effort to hold them together but they looked pretty ridiculous. And fell apart the instant they left the serving plate.

The pumpernickel crostini were elegant and simple, though not to my taste. I’m not a great fan of rye bread, and there’s nothing more seriously rye than pumpernickel. I also made a batch of breadsticks, trying out another couple of recipes from Richard Bertinet’s Dough: sesame and aniseed breadsticks, and olive, parmesan and herb breadsticks. I’m not a great fan of olives either, but these latter were really good. Naturally they were the more difficult of the two to make but I guess that’s why you put in the extra effort, eh?

I don’t want to dwell too much on the party itself. In short, we had too many cancellations. But I hope our guests left with happy thoughts, as they got butterfly cakes with coloured cream just before we wrapped up for the night.

Alas, even the cakes were not a complete success. Would you believe that a significant number weren’t even cooked when they came out of the oven? Helen turned round after ten seconds and found a bunch of them had collapsed inwards like some kind of exuberant diamond mining operation had started up.

We might have to pay some proper attention to the temperature of our oven if the cakes really were so underdone. I’m not sure what we’d need to do to measure the temperature in the oven that won’t - as the guys at Kamikaze Cookery managed to do - melt the thermometer.

I hope our guests don’t think too badly of us. The drink was mixed in a good way, the food was mixed in a bad way, and maybe the invited friends felt a bit awkward. But the one thing everyone agreed was the Pama (that’s a pomegranate liqueur, m’lud) is the bees knees. Get some.

My Granny’s heyday as a good old fashioned entertainer and housewife saw us proud for this pudding for the family.

• Glitzy Chocolate Puddings

These were really easy to make; a bit of melting of chocolate and butter and a quick whisk of some eggs, bung in the oven, then garnish and serve. The thing is, these will be a complete let down if you don’t have a marvellous Granny to loan you the right ramekins to serve this in.

These looked so much like the picture in the book that it was agreed I ought to take an empty ‘after’ shot so that you wouldn’t all accuse me of photoshopping in some images cropped directly from Nigella Express. As you can see there was not a morsel left!

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)

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.

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…

Felt like a proper grown up having six lovely friends round for lunch this Sunday.

• Layered Salad with Roast Quail
• White Chocolate Mint Mousse

However, whilst the intention had been to get through more recipes, and the table was heaving with food, as you’ll see we only managed another two recipes. The rest of the food was still Nigella inspired, taking the form of three dips from the Mezze Feast for 10-20 in Feast and some Richard Bertinet flatbreads to wipe all the slurpy bits up with.

To start with, the layered salad with quail. I enjoyed the salad more than I’d expected to; I’m not normally that impressed by radishes but they added colour and were inoffensive; the cucumber and red pepper added crunch and the dressing was straight forward and tasty- mostly honey and lemon juice, the same mix as basted the gorgeous little quail. There were twelve of these little guys- I wished there’d been sixteen cos they’d have looked better on the plates- and I now have 12 souls hanging heavy in my heart. For dear Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All says in Meat that Quail are now often as badly abused as cheap chicken and ought to be avoided. However he is also quite pro-Waitrose (commenting favourably on their openness regarding sourcing and the very fact that they have policies) so I am going to go back and check out the provenance of the birdies wot I bought and see whether I need to repent my wicked ways, or merely wipe my brow that I got away with it this time.

As you can see there were plenty of bits and pieces to go with the salad and quail: a warmly spicy kidney bean and lime dip; freshly baked flatbreads for tearing and sharing; a goats cheese, walnut and basil dip; water to drink which had been flavoured with slivers of cucmber and chunks of strawberry and which was in exactly the right fruity, foreign, slightly exotic but basically accessible register for the rest of the meal. Wow, I just used the word register when talking about food. I fear I may be turning into Nigella.

Pudding came without any guilt of the ethical variety and merely with guilt of the calorific variety. The white chocolate mint mousses are meant to be served in very small volumes. Serving glass size dictated I went a little larger, but any bigger and my guests would have had to have been rolled down the stairs. Fabulously sweet and creamy with it, these were a delicious little pocket of naughty puddingness at the end of the meal.

I made these somewhat on the hoof- after our friends had arrived and in fact after we’d started eating the main spread- which meant that the white chocolate had started to solidify and these had little nuggets of chocolate dotted through them. I’m not sure it didn’t add a little something, to be honest. As I tried to explain to Martin at the time, white chocolate doesn’t behave like real chocolate, going from molten through a gently increasing range of stiffnesses to solid- it rather crystallises so that it goes from thickly gooey (it never really gets runny) to having a three dimensional structure rather too quickly. Like I say though, this didn’t detract. There was quite a bit left over; planked into ramekins, Dougal and I have been enjoying the wickedness nightly since Sunday!

A sandwich of duck breast, pomegranate and mint, on home-made (for the bruschetta) pain de campagne. No, I wasn’t sharing!

With K over from Canada, we needed a properly celebratory dinner. Cocktails and three courses were the order of the day!

• Duck Breasts with Pomegranate and Mint
• Mellow Meatballs
• Cherry Cheesecake

Our salad starter, seared duck breasts on a bed of rocket and chard, scattered with pomegranate seeds, pan juices and mint leaves, has to go down as one of the great unexpected sucesses of the challenge so far. I honestly hadn’t expected it to be much cop; it seemed little more than an array of individual ingredients with nothing to tie them together.

How wrong I was. The juices from the duck and pomegranate dressed the salad beautifully, and the contrast between the fruity seeds and the ripped up mint was heavenly. As an added bonus this was really very easy to make in advance. Itwas a great start to the meal, served alongside an overflowing bowl of sesame plaits and poppyseed stars made by my resident bread chef Dougal.

The meatballs didn’t, to my mind, turn out all that differently to the Red Prawn and Mango Curry I did for Dougal’s birthday. I suppose both use Red Thai curry paste and coconut milk ( and I did forget to add the honey to the meatballs) but I was a bit unimpressed. They weren’t very mellow either. Filling though, which was good on a wet night, but not the sophisticated main I had half-fancied serving everyone.

Pudding was a definite first for me- a genuine chilled cheesecake! Generally it worked well, although there was no way I could have made five digestive biscuits cover the base of my tin, so I doubled that up. The tin also turned out to have a lip in the base (perhaps I had it the wrong way up?) which made serving rather tricky and inelegant!

Over all this cheesecake was nice, it did definitely taste like a bona fide cheesecake, but I felt the topping was lacking. We used the specified Rhapsodie de St Dalfour cherry conserve, but I wouldn’t get it again. I think it needed to be sweeter. Clearly Nigella Lawson and I disagree here, as she says basically any cherry topping with no added sugar will do.

All in, quite a sucessful little dinner party, if not quite as glamorous as it might have been!