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!

A wee Thursday night party. Ah, the life of the young professional!

• Mouclade
• Flan

We were delighted to have K&B over for mussels the other night. We’d put out a request on Facebook for friends to go halfers with us on a couple of kilos of mussels…unfortunately all the responses we got were from people outside of Scotland, but our Edinburgh friends didn’t realise this, and assumed we’d had takers. A bit of idle pub chat the other night revealed that this was not the case and the date was set!

We got our mussels from the lovely George Campbell and Sons Fishmongers on Ferry Road. We had to debeard them ourselves, which was a cold job, but otherwise they were in very good nick with only a couple failing to open on standing in cold water.

The broth the mussels are cooked over contained madras powder. I’d been a little worried these would be ‘curried mussels’ but it was more that you were left with a pleasing tingling on the lips. What looked like a vast pile of mussels was rapidly demolished, leaving impressive piles of shells. We mopped up the winey creamy juices with a stack of D’s baguettes and had a grand old messy time of it.

We followed up with Flan, an express’ed up Mexican version of Crème Caramel.We were a bit worried as we made the caramel for this. We weren’t sure how fiercely to heat the sugar or whether to stir it. We consulted the two other recipe books we have with recipes for Crème Caramel and discovered…..that James Martin nicked his recipe from Delia Smith. They are practically verbatim copies. That said, both books are copyright BBC so maybe it doesn’t count as plagiarism!

The additional reading gave us the confidence to make the caramel and we successfully attained the colour of maple syrup (Delia: two shades darker than golden syrup. James: two or three shades darker than golden syrup. I’m sorry, but I don’t have the Pantone syrup kit!)

The ‘crème’ was added-evaporated milk, condensed milk, eggs and vanilla essence- and it all baked in a dish of water in the oven for 45 mins. After a night in the fridge, it was ready to serve. It took a little persuading to come out of its dish, but when it did it really looked the part.

The texture was firmer than any of us really expected- set quite firm, like cheese almost. Whether this was because of its express construction or whether we’d over-cooked it slightly I’m not sure. Suffice to say it did not detract! We all thought this was pretty fabulous AND went back for seconds. The firm texture also meant Dougal was easily able to take a slice to work the next day, which might not have been possible with a wobblier set.

Yum!

 A stress-free feed with old friends, plus my first ever (intentional) cooking with fire.

• Cheese Fondue
• Crêpes Suzette

Both recipes from the Retro chapter of the book, which was nice as it served as an occasion for which to get my friends together. Without occasions I fear they’ll get going-to-Helen’s-for-dinner fatigue.

The night before, Dougal whipped up a pair of pain de Campagne. One was cut into chunks and left out all day to stale up. I also gave the chunks half an hour in a low oven just to really be sure.

We gathered around seven, and Dougal made folks a retro-cool White Lady to sup on while we ate cashews, chatted, and I made the fondue. By eight, the fondue was bubbling and brought to the table.

To dip in our cheesey pot we had the aforementioned pre-staled bread, as well as chunks of Granny Smith and batons of chicory. These were suggested by Nigella, and as one of the gang said, you know you’re doing a Nigella Challenge when you just happen to have some chicory in the fridge! We all had a grand time dipping into the thick bubbling cheese, dribbling juices across the table and then gobbling up the hot mouthfuls. One loaf of pain de campagne was the perfect amount, and we had just enough cheese to satisfy without weighing ourselves down too much.

A marvellous feast. The gorgeous fondue pot in the picture belongs to my parents, and may even have been a wedding present- although I may equally be making that up as I am something of a romantic fantasist. Regardless, it is a properly retro piece of kit. I enjoyed this meal (and enjoy fondue, generally,) so much that I will seriously consider investing in my own fondue dish in the future- perhaps when we have somewhere to store the blighter.

After a suitable mid-meal break (and a few games of Hangman and Pictionary on the blackboard) I got on with preparing the crêpes suzette. The (shop bought) crêpes were layered in a pan whilst I made an orangey syrup to souse them with. This syrup is not for those in the least bit concerned with their general health. What can I say, retro meal means retro health attitude?

Yes, that is a whole packet of butter…

Making the syrup took longer than expected but I think part of that was that I was expecting the juice to seem syrupy in the pan. I cooked it for easily twice as long as suggested in the book, but I think had I let it cool after the first fifteen mins it would have proved itself adequately syrupy. As it was, it didn’t fully penetrate all the crêpes, which may mean I had over thickened it. Horrors!

Once the crêpes were warmed in their sauce, it was time to add a little pazzazz to the mix. I heated up some Cointreau in the syrup pan and then poured it over the hot crêpe pan and then lit it with the blow torch, for want of anything better. Woomph! Up went the flame, the syrup pan went up too, and then, like that, it was gone. You can’t really tell in the photos, partly because Dougal claims I didn’t give him adequate warning, and partly because we got the lighting wrong. If you look closely though, there’s a blue tinge round the pan.

These weren’t especially pretty once served, but by golly did they taste good. This is not really surprising, given the volume of butter involved! Rich and creamy and zingy with orange. Definitely worth repeating. However, we have since had a look at the Delia Smith (1982) recipe for Crêpes Suzette….she uses about a third of the amount of butter. So perhaps we could rein it in a bit next time. For the good of our health!

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.

It’s hard work making all these elegant photographs. Helen has put in a lot of work to find the right container for many of these dishes, and we’ve learned a lot in the past six months about taking food shots. The little brown bowl shown here originally contained a Waitrose tapas meal. Which was apparently bought because it looked a lot like the bowl Nigella used in the book

• Smoked Trout Pâté

The fish pâté was a doddle. Just dump everything into the food processor for thirty seconds and then scoop into the bowl before chilling. I made some pains façon baucaire, little rolls with holes in the middle, the night before. We had them with the fish and some cornichons. And we still had plenty left for lunch the next day.

You can see I managed to get inside the blender for this shot, which is certainly adventurous if not particularly artistic. For this shot I actually stood on a ladder at the other end of the room, and used a super-zoom to get in this close.

You can see our elegant bowl here, and the pâté in all its tousled, farmhouse-authentic glory. It takes a lot of effort to look this natural. I make no apologies for the sandwich with the gherkin teeth. That was all Helen’s fault.

Following on from our curry, we rounded off Sunday by continuing the subcontinent theme.

• Mango Split

Much as you might imagine, this comprises fresh mango and ice cream, with mango sorbet thrown in for good measure. However this is Nigella Express so more sugar and booze is needed; this comes in the form of a lime and rum syrup to drizzle over the top. I took the suggested option of crystallised stem ginger but Dougal passed on it as he thinks it is the work of the devil. There should have been shredded coconut but I’m not a coconut fan (and could only find dessicated- is that the same? In the picture in Nigella Express it looks more like parmesan!).

Most irritatingly, despite specially remembering to buy them, I forgot to use the fan wafers which Nigella suggests to make this a proper party. It was still a really special pudding but not as frou frou as it might have been. I’ll definitely be making these again, although I did find the Waitrose mango sorbet overpowering and won’t replace it when it’s done- plain old ice cream will be just fine!

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!

A recipe that we simply wouldn’t have considered had it not been for the challenge. Fabulously, wonderfully successful.

• Goujons of Sole with Dill Mayonnaise

Why would we not have considered this? Well, it seemed a bit of a fankle. Get fish (skinless). Cut into funny strips.

Array some corn flour (seasoned), some egg and some funny foreign bread crumbs. Dip. Rest.

Make some mayonnaise with dill (bleh). Array a plate with lettuce and some cornichons (yum). Ignore the fact that cornichons taste of dill (I’m not sure that bit was in the recipe).

Fry fishy strips. Drain of oil. Serve. With beer.

You see? Horrendously complicated. Worst of all, I took the Nigella Express long view and made a double quantity of the goujons, so that next time we will need only fry these. Ten minutes of frying (and the purchase of some more cornichons) is all that stands between me and succulent, crispy, sweet, tart, easy going laid back (retro) heaven. Thank you, Mr Sowden. You have introduced me to dishes I would have written off for years.

A salad which could have been so good, and could have been so bad. Which was it?

• Chef’s Salad

This salad started out well, with ingredients I enjoy: iceberg lettuce was something of a favourite when I was a child; the ham was good stuff sliced thickly at the deli counter in waitrose; emmental, whilst not as good as gruyere, is an alright sort of cheese, and oh man, I love avocado…

But then, stone me, some eejit went and put a whole load of sweetcorn in it! Bleh! (It should be noted that I am perfectly happy to eat sweetcorn on the cob. Off it is just plain wrong!) Good grief what are we to do do it for the sake of the children challenge grumble grumble grumble grumble.

And do you know what? It was fantastic. Really moreish. As Nigella says in the book, the range of textures really works, as do the contrasts in flavours in each mouthful. Dare I say it, the sweet sweetcorn worked well against the plain lettuce and the salty ham. It was huge- too big to mix in the serving bowl so we had to resort to the bread bowl- but we almost finished it between us.

This recipe is from the Retro Rapido chapter; you can really tell, it didn’t feel at all like any salad you would get served in the UK at present. Much of the chapter feels old and dowdy, like my mum’s 1970’s edition of the Good Housekeeping cookery book. And yet Chef’s Salad felt firmly like the kind of thing I would expect to be served in France- in a home if not in a restaurant. The same can be said for much of the Retro Rapido chapter: Oeufs en cocotte; Mouclade; Crepes Suzette; the fondue and probably even the chicken liver salad are all French or French cuisine-inspired. I’d say that italian eating has influenced much of the cooking of my formative years, basil and rocket and olives and parma ham. Why then has the introduction of Italian ideas driven out French food- once so trendy (I grew up using the words Cordon Blew to mean posh cooking without knowing why) to the point that it now seems faded and out of touch?

Last night didn’t particularly call for a starter, but last night was when the avocado ripened!

• Avocado Crayfish Cocktail

Actually, having a starter last night was quite handy, as when I got in (late) from a ‘quick’ after-work drink with the girls, Dougal needed fed, quickly. This rustled up in no time at all.

And didn’t it look grand! Not bad for two mins in the kitchen. This recipe in particular has made me very happy I decided to buy sherry vinegar. I’ve oft said that Nigella Express could bankrupt me through the purchase of condiments alone, but I think the unusual vinegar really made this. Yummy!