The Sacred Art of Eating

Nigella throws us a curveball by publishing a recipe with small portions.

• Merguez with Halloumi and Flame-Roasted Peppers

We’d been looking forward to this as it contains four of my favourite things (merguez, halloumi, roasted peppers and garlic) and because it was practically a zero effort tea; open packet, open jar, cut up cheese, put all in roasting pan, bake 20 mins. It took us until December to make this because Edinburgh has no reliable source of trust-worthy merguez. And I am picky about these things. We’d been just about to crack and order them from Nigella’s suggested online purveyor, when we took a little trip to that well known foodie mecca, Aberdeen. There, we found an ‘international street market’, where I was able to say ‘des merguez, s’il vous plait’ to a hairy frenchman and feel smug. We nearly left them in Aberdeen (technically, we did leave them in Aberdeen, but they were couriered down on the train the next day) but finally, on Friday, we got the chance to tuck into them.

It was the ideal occasion; we had an evening engagement (celebrating the PhD-Viva-passing of an old friend) to get out too promptly, but it was bitterly cold outside so we were looking for something warming and hearty to take the chill of us.

Trouble was, it felt a bit insubstantial. Nigella asked for eight sausages for four people; the way our packet split, we had five sausages, but it still wasn’t enough. They did shrink doon to skinny wee things, which can’t have helped- perhaps better quality bangers would’ve held their size and filled us up more. As we’d halved the recipe we used less than a full jar of peppers and only half a packet of halloumi- and we really wished we’d just gone the whole hog with both. We served this up with a warmed up ficelle Dougal had made the night before, which was good for mopping up the juices, but not enough.

The sausages were great- juicy and meaty- and the peppers and halloumi went really well with them. There just wasn’t enough. Not a situation we’d expect Nigella to get us into!

In the end there was nothing for it but to supplement the meal with a pudding of ice cream and chocolate sauce. I even threw a bit of peanut butter into the sauce, because Nigella has had that effect on me. And no, while you ask, I didn’t look up a recipe.

A friend was having a buffet party for her birthday, before we all headed into town dancing. I offered to make a small contribution.

• Nutella Pancakes

We had thought, a long time ago, that we might do this pudding in honour of World Nutella Day and Shrove Tuesday which surprisingly coincide. However, a key ingredient, Frangelico, to be provided by an Italian friend with access to such things, proved difficult to pin down and so we held off.So I made these at a birthday party the other night. I’d hoped I’d get a photo of me, in the kitchen, cooking whilst wearing my mother’s fancy tango dress (proof if ever it were needed that I am my Father’s daughter)(cooking in smart clothes, not wearing my mother’s dresses!) but none came. It was quite exciting, cooking against the clock in a foreign kitchen. The Birthday Girl was too busy fielding guests to be able to point me in the direction of bowls/spatulas/whisks, although her mum was a great help. Generally I managed though.

These are easy peasy and, particularly if you can source some Frangelico (just happen to have a bottle lurking in the booze cupboard after an ill-advised purchase many years ago, perhaps,) definitely worth doing. The express way is to use crêpes out of a packet but it’d be lovely to spend a morning making crêpes in advance for these too. If you made them yourself you’d want to up the number of pancakes used, unless you have a particularly big pan in which you make your pancakes!

I would agree with Nigella that the frangelico whipped cream ought to be pretty lightly whipped and floppy. I had it just right, but then unfamiliarity with the stick whisk I was using meant in both cases I took the cream a bit further than I would have liked. I don’t think any of the eaters minded though! Similarly I was worried that the crêpes came out of the oven looking a bit burned, but it was more that the edges of the pancakes effectively get fried in butter, and so these darker bits are almost the best bit. A very handy low faff but high ‘ta-dah!’ pudding.Now I shall have to make it for Dougal, who missed out :o(

Another salad dressing. I can’t see it entering my repertoire though!

• Golden Honey Mustard Dressing

I made a half volume of this dressing, as 330ml seemed a lot to have to hand! As it is we still have a jugful, and I’m not sure what to use it in. This dressing was very golden (despite my not using rapeseed oil which I avoid on principle as it tastes of bleedin nuffin and what’s the point in putting that in a dressing?) but didn’t taste of much. I had an abortive attempt at making it last night too, up till the point that I realised we’d actually no dijon mustard in the house, and then decided to throw caution to the wind and just dress my salad with lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper. That simple dressing was a lot more interesting than this namby pamby affair. You simply couldn’t make out the individual flavours.

So…pretty, but a bit dull and a bit disappointing.

Tonight we finally tackled a recipe which has been on the cards for months.

• Pappardelle with Escarole
• Clafoutis

Pappardelle with Escarole has been on the menu for sometime as an easy peasy vegetarian island in a sea of meaty recipes. However it has been off the menu for all of this time on account of it being nigh on impossible to source Escarole in Edinburgh. This lettuce is part of the endive family (Cichorium endivia var latifolia) and will in fact grow in Scotland- if only we’d thought when we first moved to this flat. It is possible we could have found one at Earthy but for my sins I’ve still never been there. I’d even had offers from friends to look for Escarole in London. In fact, it is so hard to find interesting lettuce in Scottish supermarkets or grocers that I couldn’t find any of the alternative lettuces that Nigella suggests.

The other day I spotted chicory in Waitrose, labelled as ‘also known as endive’. And I thought- that’s what I want! Turns out I was wrong. Same Genus, different species- chicory is in fact Cichorium intybus. Balls. Still, it seemed to work.

This pasta was interesting- undoubtably Italian- but not really to my tastes. It packed a potent chilli kick, which it needed seeing as it didn’t really taste of anything else. The white wine sauce was wetter than I would have liked and the parmesan melted together in big clumps. So while it looked fab at point of serving, and fitted the bill as a vegetarian main course, I don’t think we’ll be back here. If need be I’d be inclined to stick to a regular Spaghetti all´aglio, olio e peperoncino if I need something simple and meatless.

Clafoutis was a very easy pudding to make; mix it all together and off you go (cherries from a jar, so no stoning required). This is an express version, baked quickly at heat. It would have been pretty much perfect had I not put it too high up in the oven. It rose up and got stuck amongst the grill element. Oh No! Thankfully I was cooking for Dougal and my best friend from uni; a more sympathetic audience I don’t expect you’ll get so instead of swearing and weeping there was (swearing and) much laughter, as we used a wooden spoon to hold the top down as we pulled the dish from the oven. I’ve never ruined a dish so quickly!

Thankfully it hadn’t actually burned badly; once dusted with icing sugar who would know? However the wooden spoon shenanigans did mean it was in pieces on top, not exactly exquistite. However, once portioned up you couldn’t tell (sadly I didn’t take any portion sized pieces) and with a good slosh of cream (leftover from the over zealous allocation for the previous day’s Butterfly Cakes) this was cherry heaven. The recipe said this served 6-8. Technically I didn’t have enough cherries (I think I’d been planning on halving the quantities) but I felt the cherry to custard ratio was fine. We made it go three portions plus a second helping for two (four equal sized portions, in short). Heaven forbid this is restraint on Nigella’s part!!

I’ll do this again. Perhaps even as individual portions next time, for ultimate silliness?

A sweet little pudding and the last recipe in the book. Perhaps we ought to have saved it till the end?

• Vanilla Apples with Sweetheart Croûtes

We’d been meaning to make this pudding for ages. Back in the old flat, in the days before Dougal made bread, I even went as far as buying some pan bread when I saw it reduced in Somerfields late one night. What held me back though, was that I did not own a heart shaped cookie cutter. I had a star, and at first thought that would do, you know, “Sweet Star Croûtes” but ultimately realised it had to be done proper.

Thankfully, at my birthday, the boys done me proud. I say boys, as both Dougal and my brother bought me a range of cookie cutters, both including hearts. This is very exciting!

So, I commissioned D to make me a pain de mie (a high class sliced white loaf) and off we went!

I had great fun stamping heart shapes out of the bread, and you’ll be pleased to hear we blitzed the edges up for breadcrumbs and froze them for a later date.

Despite having been looking forward to this probably since I got the book, since before the Challenge began, I was amazed by how much I enjoyed this recipe. I suppose you can’t really go wrong with good bread, fresh apple, butter, sugar and good vanilla extract but I really can’t say how lovely this was. A proper treat. We’ll be back, I know it.

Anticipating feeling a little fragile (in fact I felt relieved and energised) on Friday night, I asked Dougal for a no-commitment Friday night in front of the TV with easy to handle food.

• Roast Poussin and Sweet Potatoes
• Wasabi Lime Dressing

As Nigella boasts in the pre-amble to this dish, the great thing about this is that you can construct it with very little effort, fling it in the oven whilst you watch some high quality TV (spoilers!) , and then eat it in front of the telly too. We worked in a salad dressing too, because Nigella said the meat and taters were good with watercress and lime, and because this salad dressing was touted as going well with a salad of watercress and avocado and plain simple foods. The only let down in the end was that the avocado failed (it out and out refused!) to ripen in time so could not be included.

I made the decision to halve the number of poussins from one each to one between two. They seemed like quite a large meal for one! Whilst Dougal would say this was the right decision, I personally could have done with more meat. The sweet potato, basted in wok oil, cumin and cinnamon was right up my street- I’d do them again.

Although I’d have preffered a stronger lime kick, the salad dressing did indeed go well with the meat and potatoes, packing quite a punch. Not so great a punch, though, as the English mustard which Nigella stipulates is essential with this. I think she’s missing a trick not just having a highly wasabied up salad on the side.

Lip smackingly slurpily wonderful curry, which tasted like it had been cooking for hours…yet took less than half an hour from start to finish, and I got to sit down with a beer and some pistachios during that half an hour!

• Curry in a Hurry

I had been anticipating feeling a bit low last night, and so decided that comforting food and comfortable company were the way forward. This recipe advertised itself as something you could cook after work for friends (have everything in the freezer or cupboard and pick up the chicken on your way home kind of idea) and so seemed to fit the bill.

It all came together very quickly. Fry some spring onions, add secret magic ingredient thai curry paste (ours doesn’t look quite like the picture because we had just the right amount of red paste in the fridge vs absolutely no green curry paste, as called for, c’est la vie!) brown the chicken and then fling in coconut milk, chicken stock and interesting veg out of the freezer. I had never eaten a soya bean in its native state before, and yet curiously despite seeming quite exotic are readily available from Mr Bird’s Eye at the grim Scotmid at the foot of Leith Walk. Not what you would expect. They didn’t taste especially exotic, I must confess, more like a pea but with lots of flesh- quite satisfying in a mouthful.

We had this with steaming rice from the oven and a generous squeeze of lime juice over the top. Yes, our noses were streaming by the end but it was absolutely worth it. The chicken thighs had a lovely texture which I think I probably preferred to breast meat. That said I reckon with a bit of subsitution of broccoli and veg stock this would make an excellent veggie curry too.

We finished up with pudding; Nick did terribly well by professing to prefer the pink ice cream to the white without being forewarned that the pink was homemade No-Churn-Pomegranate wheras the white was shop bought vanilla (although it was the very finest Luca’s can offer!).

The left-over sauce from this (very liquid and with all the chicken gone) made an excellent high-mess soup for lunch today, with extra soya and fine beans thrown in and a nest of egg noodles stirred through. Fab!

A Storecupboard SOS recipe….for which I had to buy in pretty much every key ingredient. Ho hum!

• Salade Niçoise

Another adventure into the world of nasty little fishes! This salad was a sped-up take on a standard Tuna Niçoise, with croutons replacing boiled potatoes and ’sun drenched’ tomatoes creeping in to add some moisture and softness.

All in all I was really pleased with this salad actually. The flavours came together nicely; I even managed to eat all my anchovies, although there was a little strategic loading of forks going on (…if I add a bit of Tuna it’ll already taste fishy…then some olives will mean it’s already salty…) and the tomatoes were gorgeously soft and melty. The dressing of tomato-steeping oil, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and sugar was surprisingly punchy and the iceberg lettuce added structure and simplicity in amongst all the other fancy bits. Speaking of which, exceptional tuna was sourced at Kember and Jones in Glasgow (although immediately after Waitrose got their act together and started selling interesting stuff) but was not the really expensive variety as seen on the inside sleeve of Nigella Express. The NHS will have to start paying scientists considerably better if I am to be willing to pay £7.20 for a (larger than average) tin of tuna, exceptional or not!

Next time I might up the egg count to two between three- only getting four quarters seemed a bit mean, but then perhaps I’m just a pig as Dougal only ate three of his. Also, I was very impressed by the frozen fine beans; they cooked up a treat and now I have veg in my freezer for when the notion next takes me. Excellent.

In an attempt to blitz a few recipes the easy way, we are even doing the salad dressings this week.

• Anchovy Red Wine Dressing

This used up the anchovies I’d bought for the Turkey with Gherkin, Anchovy and Dill the other week. However, unlike that dish these anchovies were raw and undiluted (well, apart from the oil and vinegar). The fishy flavour was fairly potent, and I kept expecting the salad to be hiding chunks of tuna. Sometimes though it was a little too fishy in an evil anchovy, non-tuna way.

We took Nigella up on her suggestion that this dressing was well suited to dressing flame grilled peppers by adding some to the salad but I’m not sure I saw what she was getting at. Perhaps she means if you grilled some peppers yourself this would be a good topping, not unlike a recipe for Piedmont Roasted Peppers from Delia Smith’s Summer Collection that is a particular favourite with my parents.

I think the rest of this sauce might be quite good on pasta though- fusilli, perhaps with something through it-and so the remainder of the dressing is in a jar in the fridge. So perhaps the little salty bastards are winning me over after all.

When it’s raining outside and you’ve been wishing to return to bed all day, what you really need from your evening meal is a thick, hot soup.

• Minestrone in minutes

And Minestrone in Minutes takes about as long as it does to cook plain pasta, so it really does happen when you need it to happen. But it was also a bit of a disappointment, possibly because the ingredients we used were all slightly inappropriate. The pasta was too small, the pre-cooked beans weren’t really cooked properly, and so the result was not everything it could be.

I also think that a long slow cook would have warmed up the kitchen more. Maybe I should have been baking at the same time to take the chill off our bones. Still, it looks great, doesn’t it?