Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 52

Having spent the Christmas break at a lovely hotel in the Cotswolds it was always going to be a bit of a come down to get home again, but luckily with the recipes I had in store it was by no means a disappointing week. The good thing about a nice long Christmas holiday is getting to experiment in the kitchen and try lots of new things. 

 My first new recipe of the week was Nigella’s Ham in Coke (no jokes please!) which I cooked in my slow cooker as it was the only thing big enough to hold the vast piece of gammon that I’d ordered from my local butcher. So there it sat all day cooking away while I found homes for all my new toys, obviously this meant cramming even more stuff into my already over-packed kitchen. Once the ham was cooked I smothered it in the sticky glaze and popped it in the oven for a short time then left it to cool and tried not to pick bits off every time I walked past it. We enjoyed this throughout the week in sandwiches, as part of a meat and cheese platter and even after that I still managed to shred what was left and stow some portions away in the freezer for recipes in the New Year. Probably the best ham I’ve ever cooked!

 

Throughout the entire Christmas period I had yet to eat any turkey (I had the most divine halibut on Christmas day, and would not have changed it for the world), therefore on our return home I had to cook roast turkey – without which it just wouldn’t have been Christmas. Who else would I turn to at this point that my old friend Ottolenghi and his Marinated Turkey Breast with Cumin, Coriander & White Wine. The marinade alone was to die for; I had to find excuses to go into the fridge so that I could get a hit of it every couple of hours. I served it with roast potatoes, carrots and parsnips and some sprouts (it wouldn’t really be Christmas without them would it?!). The turkey had stayed nice and moist and with some of the reheated marinade as a sauce gave it such a wonderful aromatic flavour.
  

My next recipe was a simple dessert for when some friends popped round for a few drinks, following a cheese and meat platter I brought out some Chestnut Chocolate Pots from Nigella’s Christmas. They really couldn’t be easier to make and just require a few hours in the fridge to set, but they were the perfect end to a very enjoyable evening – in fact at one point I thought my fridge was going to be raided for the remaining ones so that my friends could enjoy more on the train home (thankfully I managed to bribe them with a few chocolates instead!). They were not too rich, which I find with a lot of chocolate puddings and so generally avoid them, and they had a really silky smooth consistency – I’m salivating just at the thought of them now, damn you January detox!! 

 

Another dessert I made was some Mini Pavlovas from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, just in case people were not a fan of chocolate. Again extremely easy to make and just required a little assembly on the night, the meringues were lovely and sweet with a hint of vanilla which nicely off-set the topping of whipped cream with raspberries and pomegranate seeds. A superb pudding that we also enjoyed on New Year’s Eve after yet another new recipe…and yes, that one was also courtesy of Nigella!

 

 

 

So I made it to the last day of the year and my final recipe of the cookbook challenge, Lamb and Date Tagine from Nigella’s Christmas. After a busy festive period and a Christmas away from home a quiet night in for New Year was just the ticket, I prepared the tagine in advance and let it cook away slowly in the oven while we sat back and enjoyed the last few hours of 2013. I served it with some plain couscous and the red onion and pomegranate relish which had a lovely sharpness which was a nice contrast to the beautifully sweet and rich tagine, it was just delicious and the lamb melted in your mouth. Definitely a dish on which to finish the year, and following it with a pavlova made it a very decadent ending indeed – all that was left was to see in the New Year with a glass of Prosecco. 

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Recipe Count: 170
New Target: 156

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 51

Clearly the Christmas festivities were just too much for me, I didn’t sit down at a computer once to complete my write-up, but rest assured I did complete the challenge.

In the second-to-last week of 2013 I made two new recipes, in a last ditched attempt to eat healthily before the festive feasting began. My first new recipe was Pasta with Tomato, Anchovy & Chilli from Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course. It was a very simple dish but it was packed with fresh flavours, a nice salty hit from the capers and anchovies, and a nice heat from the crushed chilli. This is a perfect midweek meal and will definitely be appearing on our menu in 2014…just the kind of thing I’ll be craving come January.

My final new recipe of the week was Italian Bean Stew with Bread Dumplings from Gino’s Italian Escape. A very substantial dish packed with beans and topped with ciabatta dumplings, this will keep even the most ardent meat-eaters happy. Nice and warming too on a cold and wet December day, the stew was peppered with a lovely heat from the chilli and the dumplings added a very welcome hit of crunch, giving way to a wonderfully soft centre that could be used to soak up the delicious juices. I think this book has proved its worth this year, I don’t think it’s in the firing line just yet and may well live to see another year on the bookshelf.

Recipe Count: 165
New Target: 156

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 50

My first recipe of the week was a much needed pick-me-up for the evening following our work Christmas parties (without fail every year my party is the same night as hubby’s), and with us both feeling decidedly worse for wear I figured the best option was curry. I was quite impressed that we didn’t feel worse to be honest but the overriding feeling was one of sheer exhaustion, so after a mid-afternoon snooze I felt ready to tackle the evening meal. I chose Cauliflower & Chickpea Curry from Sarah Raven’s Food for Friends & Family. Luckily it was fairly straightforward and even in my sorry state I was still able to hack up a cauliflower and chuck it in a pot with some spices and create a very tasty dish. I did cook it for slightly longer than it said because when I checked the cauliflower was still retaining too much bite, but that was ok since it gave me time for another quick nap. The spices weren’t overly hot but gave a really nice flavour to the cauliflower and together with the chickpeas made a very substantial vegetarian curry; I served it with naan bread to mop up all the delicious juices.

It turned out to be a very curry oriented week as my next dish was Keema from Nigella’s Feast, although I did allow a few days between curries. I love lamb, peas and curry so this was always going to be a winning recipe for me, the spices smelt wonderful as I added them to the pan and created a really lovely aroma in the kitchen. The overall heat from the finished dish probably good have done with a bit more of a kick but the actual flavour was delicious and served with some basmati rice it was the perfect end to a chilly winters day.

My third and final new recipe of the week was a Southern Sausage Stew from Jamie’s America, another spicy dish and this one seemed to have inherited the heat from the Keema earlier in the week, boy was it a hot one! With an abundance of paprika and cayenne pepper this was a rich and spicy stew filled with peppers and big meaty sausages. I served it with plain rice which was great to soak up the lovely thick sauce, and also to provide a bit of relief from the spicy hit that came with every mouthful. I think if I were to make it again I might just tone down the spice a bit, but other than that I think it was a very nice midweek meal.

Oh and look what my lovely husband bought for me this week, meet Jacques the Snowman, from Maison Blanc...

Recipe Count: 163
New Target: 156

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 49

I have been meaning to make a pumpkin pie for the past few years but have always been too busy with Christmas prep to even think about it when Thanksgiving came around, however this year I was determined to give it a go (especially considering I did actually taste some last year at my neighbours’ and it was very tasty). So armed with a recipe taken from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook I set about a day of pie making (I was also knocking up a chicken and tarragon pie from my leftover slow-cooking efforts). I really didn’t think much to the pastry at all and ended up ditching it in favour of my second lot of pastry as I just couldn’t work with it at all, but once I switched I had the tin lined in no time ready for the pumpkin mixture. I left it in slightly longer than specified because it had just a little bit too much wobble for my liking. Once it was out and cooled I sprinkled the top with a mixture of icing sugar and cinnamon. When it came to pudding time I was glad to see that it cut well and there was no sign of a soggy bottom – Mary Berry would be pleased! The filling was set nicely and the spices really cut through the flavour of the pumpkin. 

 

My other new recipe of the week was Cantonese-Style Sweet & Sour Pork from Ching's Chinese Food in Minutes, a dish that I kept coming back to look at but never got around to making – probably because I’m not a massive fan of deep fried food. I think the batter might not have been thick enough as it didn’t coat the pork as I would have liked, and consequently did not quite have the crispy coating when cooked, it may have been because I used a large egg and the ratio to corn flour was not quite right. Regardless of that the pork was still very tender and the sweet and sour sauce was nice, and thick enough to coat the vegetables and pork well. I served it with plain rice which soaked up all the juices nicely, I think I’ll do this again in future and try and get the batter right as I’m sure it would be a lot better with a nice crispy coating on the pork.

Recipe Count: 160
New Target: 156

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 48

As in recent weeks I wanted to begin the week with a spot of baking, but also to keep it cheap and cheerful so I was limited to what I already had in the cupboards – flapjack was the obvious answer so I made the recipe from Delia’s Cakes. After checking with hubby precisely how he liked his flapjack cooked, crunchy or chewy, I followed the recipe with the full quantity of butter thrown in. I love how easy they are to make, no creaming of the butter and sugar, just melt, mix and bake! I couldn’t decide whether or not to dip them in chocolate but with the acquisition of some mince pies (just for research you understand, they are supposedly the best ones you can buy!) hubby was otherwise distracted so I had some time to mull it over. The following morning I decided that yes why the hell not, let’s push the boat out and cover all that buttery goodness in some chocolate as well. I’m glad I did because that deliciously bitter dark chocolate really does cut through the chewy buttery oats and add a luxurious element to the classic flapjack.

Hubby had been craving a big fat burger for a few days so to prevent him from being lured into a substandard eatery I made Burgers with Spicy Mayo from Jamie’s America for dinner on Saturday night. The perfect thing for a quiet night in, I whipped up the meaty mixture and formed into six satisfyingly big burgers and popped them in the fridge to chill. In the meantime I mixed up the spicy mayo and chopped up the potatoes into wedges and left them to soak, then went and sat down with a nice glass of red wine safe in the knowledge that dinner would be a cinch to complete later on. When the time came all I had to do was to pop the wedges into the oven and then return a while later to griddle the burgers, I also griddled the buns slightly so that they had a little crunch. I layered the burgers with lettuce, spicy mayo, tomatoes and gherkins – the only struggle then was squashing it down enough to be able to take a bite! The slight crunch from the bun was a nice contrast to the soft fillings and the spicy mayo gave a lovely bit of heat, and was also good as a dip for the potato wedges. I made the entire recipe for six burgers so now we have a couple of little food parcels for the freezer – and we shall look forward to another burger in a few weeks.

After the success of last week’s slow cooking I once again cooked dinner at breakfast time and made Braised Beef with Horseradish from the Slow Cooker Cookbook by Catherine Atkinson. Having got the butcher to cut me some nice big braising steaks the previous morning, I quickly seared them in a hot pan and added them to the slow cooker, followed shortly after by the sautéed shallots and chopped carrots. Once everything else was added I switched on the cooker and looked forward to smelling the fruits of my labour for the next few hours. With dinner taken care of there was nothing left to do but write my Christmas cards and wrap all the presents that I’d bought so far, and with my festive jumper squirrelled safely upstairs it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Later on I simply prepared the veg, and served with mash and some green beans this really was the perfect wintery Sunday dinner. The steak just melted when nudged with a fork and went superbly well with the fluffy mashed potato, and there was plenty of sauce to be mopped up so I always make a little bit more mash just in case. This is my first winter with a slow cooker and I’m enjoying it so far, the only difficult bit is deciding what to cook next!

Trofie

My final new recipe of the week was Trofie al Pesto Genovese from The Geometry of Pasta. I must admit that I did commit the cardinal sin of using dried trofie, but as a week night meal I figure that I have a good enough excuse, and it seemed to take me long enough to strip my basil plants off all the leaves in order to make the pesto – ah, but what glorious pesto it was! Even with a couple of basil plants I still only had enough to make about a third of the quantity, but given that particular part of the recipe made enough for ten I was not too concerned. Cooking the pasta and adding the potatoes and green beans for the last five minutes meant that the dish was light on the washing-up too, something hubby is always grateful for. Once cooked all it needed was a spoonful or two of pesto to be stirred through it and it was ready, it couldn’t be simpler. The trofie was just slightly al dente and worked brilliantly with the soft potato and crunchy beans but I think the hero of the dish was definitely the pesto, did I mention it was good? And even with my meagre quantity I still have half of it left which can be safely tucked into the freezer until next time, hurrah!

Recipe Count: 158
New Target: 156

…With a mere four weeks to go I have broken my third target of the year, and this close to the end I don’t think I’ll be setting another one - I'll just see how many more I can cram in. But I have to say I’m pretty pleased with the amount of new recipes I’ve tried this year, for what was a rather flippant New Year’s resolution I’ve done quite well (it’s probably the only one I’ve ever stuck to!).

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 47

Another of my recent acquisitions in the cookbook department was Home Sweet Home from the Hummingbird Bakery, I had resisted it for a long time but when I saw it for the bargain price of five pounds on a certain website my willpower officially ran out. So to justify my new purchase I had to bake something immediately and eventually settled on some Chocolate Truffle Cookies. The recipe doesn’t call for many ingredients so I didn’t even have to buy anything in, and they were exceptionally easy to make – there’s just a resting period of about forty minutes which means you will have to entertain yourself for a while. Once the mixture is chilled you just have to roll into balls, smother them in icing sugar and pop them into the oven on a baking tray. During cooking they will melt down and spread slightly so that you end up with a wonderfully cracked appearance, the dark chocolate colour an amazing contrast to the icing sugar. Just be warned that when you try to eat them you will get a little dusty, but they are definitely worth it!

My second new recipe this week came hot on the heels of the cookies and I was in the kitchen a mere two hours later. My chosen recipe was Gammon Steaks with Parsley from Nigella Express, and I’d bought some lovely big steaks from the butcher that very morning. As the steaks were so enormous I cooked them under the grill instead, there’s no way one was going to fit in my frying pan let alone both of them. I mixed up the sauce and reduced it just the same, adding juices from the gammon along the way. I have to admit that I wasn’t too keen on the smell of the sauce, it seemed very vinegary and didn’t really lose enough of it through the cooking – that said though it didn’t taste too bad once it was plated with the meat and peas so maybe I spoke too soon. Hubby certainly seemed to enjoy it and as a gammon-lover that has to be some kind of an endorsement.

The following day I fired up the slow cooker and made Tarragon Chicken in Cider from the Slow Cooker Cookbook by Catherine Atkinson, a book that was kindly given to me by a lovely friend who knew I was on the lookout for just such a cookbook (I’d previously borrowed books from the library but didn’t have one of my very own). I’d forgotten how nice it was to prepare the evening meal early and smell it cooking throughout the day, venturing out from the ironing room a few hours later I was greeted by the most wonderful smell – I felt like someone else had cooked for me. When the cooking time was nearly up I turned on the pre-prepared potatoes on to boil for the mash and then a bit later some peas. The chicken was so fantastically tender and moist and the sauce was so tasty, and especially good when mopped up with the mashed potato. I made the whole quantity for this recipe so have some portions to pop in the freezer, which I think I might use as a pie filling in a few weeks’ time – I can’t wait! I think the slow cooker will be in solid use for the rest of the winter, I’d best get the butcher on speed-dial.

 

My final new dish of the week was Butternut Squash Risotto with Sage Butter from Gino’s Italian Escape, mainly because I had half a squash taking up residence in the fridge and it desperately needed using. With the squash cooked and pureed the rest of the recipe was fairly standard for a risotto, lots of stirring and slopping in more stock from time-to-time. The sage butter was simple to make and sat to one side as I continued my stirring, the butter had turned a nice brown colour and smelt nutty with overtones of sage – I couldn’t wait to taste it! Adding the final few elements to the risotto turned it really glossy and sumptuous, and with a trickling of the sage butter it looked even better on the plate. I’d forgotten how much I love the combination of squash and sage, and even more so that lovely crunch of the crispy sage leaves that had been fried in the butter – just heavenly. This is one risotto that is worth all the stirring! 

Recipe Count: 154
New Target: 156

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 46

My first new recipe was supposed to have been made last week but with an abundance of pumpkin cake I didn’t really think some Chocolate & Pecan Muffins with a Maple Glaze, from Rachel Allen’s Cake, were strictly necessary. I find that it’s always a good idea to have cake in the house so with depleted stocks I found myself reaching for my apron again. These are a sort of cross between a cupcake and a muffin, the mixture was more of a cake mix than a batter, but with them being laden with pecans, chocolate chips and smothered in maple syrup you really don’t miss that creamy icing on the top. They were delicious with a cup of tea, not too sweet at all despite the syrupy drizzle, with the pecans and chocolate adding a wonderful texture and flavour… and they were the perfect thing for hubby’s lunchbox (no fear of the cupcake smear!).

Still in the mood for a bit of Thai spice, and consciously trying to incorporate plenty of fresh and healthy dishes into my diet, my next recipe was a Green Papaya Salad from Cook in Boots. My papaya was perhaps a little too ripe to fully do this dish justice but I didn’t really mind, and with hubby safely at a gig there was no one else to worry about. The dressing was that wonderful combination of sweet, salt and spice, and the crunch from the green beans and crushed peanuts more than made up for the papaya being slightly soft – I did modify the recipe so that it just fed one but I think I could have quite happily chomped my way through the entire thing (I can only imagine the chilli buzz after all that…I can quite believe that they’re addictive!). And I did omit the prawns because I didn’t really feel they were necessary, having enjoyed a prawn-less version in a restaurant recently too.

With the short cold days drawing in the memories of warmer places keep me nice and warm, one of my favourites being our honeymoon in Marrakech and all the wonderfully fragrant food we sampled there. With this in mind I thought I should put my latest acquisition to the test, so I made the Easy Chicken Pastilla from Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course. Even with a few different stages this was very simple to put together and the smell of first the chicken roasting and then the spices mingling with the cooked chicken were sublime. Layering the filo and the filling in the cake tin was easy and it created one very packed pastilla (it’s amazing how much chicken you can pull off just four chicken thighs). A quick brush with some melted butter and it was in the oven to crisp up, then just a covering of icing sugar and cinnamon and it was ready. The flavours and the textures worked really well together, the crisp pastry and the crunch of the flaked almonds were a good contrast to the soft chicken filling, and I can attest to it being just as delicious cold for lunch the following day.

After a lunch of leftover pastilla you don’t really need or want anything too filling for dinner so I turned once again to Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course and made the Tomato Risotto. I absolutely love tomatoes and could eat them all the time, and I also love risotto so thought why not bring the two together. This is a fairly standard risotto recipe, all you need to do is cooked the tomatoes gently in some butter and add them to the dish along with some mascarpone to heat through just before serving. I think my only complaint with this dish is the inclusion of the mascarpone, maybe a smaller amount would have been ok but as it was it made the finished dish so overwhelmingly rich and creamy that you could barely discern any of the other flavours. There is no particular reason to add mascarpone to a risotto anyway as the rice provides the necessary creaminess as it cooks. I think next time I might just add slightly more parmesan and forego the mascarpone altogether…cheaper and healthier that way too!

I can’t believe that the Christmas edition of BBC Good Food magazine is out already, this is something I look forward to every year – the bumper edition!! Despite the fact that yet again we are going away for Christmas I’m still getting over excited about what to cook over the festive period. In between my excitement I managed to tear myself away from the Christmas pages and concentrate on more pressing food matters such as this week’s dinner, and I found a Moroccan Sausage Stew that sounded ideal. Essentially onions, sausages and tomatoes with some ras-el-hanout and dates thrown in for good measure – though towards the end of cooking I did decide that it lacked any punch so I threw in some harissa too. The recipe suggested serving it with mashed potatoes but I really couldn’t be bothered with scrubbing potatoes that night so I simply cooked up some couscous and I think that was just as good. The finished dish was ok, I’m not sure it really had the depth of flavour to call itself ‘Moroccan’ – you can’t just shove a spice blend in and hope for the best.

 

Being the recipient of some trofie pasta shapes (thanks to my mother spotting a bargain in Waitrose) my final recipe of the week was Smoked Salmon with Creamy Pasta & Pine Nuts from the BBC Good Food website. The pasta is a slighter firmer style and comparable with the texture of orecchiette so takes a little longer to cook, even to an al dente stage and the sauce really didn’t take much work so it only took fifteen minutes from start to finish. I was a little disappointed I have to admit, there was no real flavour to the sauce it just tasted of cream so I added the zest of a lemon to see if that would enhance it any and it did make a small difference but not really enough to elevate this to a lovely dish. I think my next dalliance with trofie will have to be more traditional and I’ll just stick with some pesto alla Genovese.

Recipe Count: 150
New Target: 156

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 45

This week began with a particularly good turnout for our Halloween cake club meeting, the largest gathering to date which saw us sampling seven different cakes…the pieces getting noticeably smaller by the time we got to the last one. My contribution to the event was a Pumpkin Spiced Bundt with Maple Cinnamon Glaze, the recipe for which I discovered on Pinterest, and without any time to concern myself with ghoulish decoration it was perfect! I decided to forego breakfast that morning which turn out to be a shrewd move given the quantity of cake on offer at 10am. We spent a very enjoyable morning in the local garden centre café surrounded by beautiful cakes and making the other patrons very jealous. My cake was fairly large and as we were all limiting ourselves to smallish pieces I had plenty to take home again afterwards, hubby was mightily pleased and has spent the week carefully working his way through it. The addition of pumpkin made it a slightly moist sponge and the spices gave it a very warm and autumnal feel, while the crunch of the maple syrup drizzle added a very welcome sweet hit.

Still feeling the need for a pre-Christmas cleanse (if you ignore all the cake, obviously) my next new recipe of the week was Salmon & Sushi Rice from Nigella’s Kitchen, if only for the reason that I had some sushi rice hiding at the back of the cupboard which needing using. I think I’ve overlooked this recipe in the past because it just looked like salmon and rice and not particularly interesting, but after a lunchtime work trip to a Thai restaurant my taste buds were craving that salty, sweet and spicy hit that this recipe has in abundance. The most time-consuming part of this dish is cooking the rice and even that isn’t difficult so while that was cooking away I mixed up the chilli dressing and cooked the salmon. Even while I was plating up I thought it still looked a little dull, but happily looks can be very deceiving. We drizzled some of the dressing over it, tucked in and immediately we were won over – the dressing was absolutely beautiful and soaked down into the rice to completely transform it into something special. I love it when I get to the end of a meal and my lips are tingling from the hit of chilli, literally buzzing from the excitement of the dish!

My final new recipe of the week was Pan-Fried Sea Bass with Basil & Pine Nut Sweet Veggie Sauce from Lorraine Pascale’s Fast, Fresh & Easy; I really am loving fish at the moment. The sauce was a sort of cross between a French ratatouille and an Italian caponata, as the aubergines cooked down nicely to create more of a vegetable stew than a sauce. I was very sceptical while I was cooking this dish and I’m not sure I’m any more enamoured with it now, hubby said he really enjoyed it and while I didn’t dislike it I can’t really summon up enough enthusiasm to write about it let alone cook it again – suffice to say the fish was well cooked and the sauce was ok.

Recipe Count: 144
New Target: 156

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 44

The clocks have changed this week and we are officially on the countdown to Christmas (I may have unofficially already been counting!), and I feel a pre-Christmas detox coming on in order to look and feel trim during the festive season. With that in mind my first new recipe of the week was Trout in a Parcel with Lemon, Fennel and Crème Fraîche from The Little Paris Kitchen. The most complicated part of the recipe is making sure that the parcels are totally sealed so that none of the steam or juices escapes during cooking, and even that wasn’t complicated just a bit fiddly! Once I’d convinced myself that the fish was cooked I plated it up with some lemon wedges and crème fraîche on the side. The fish was perfectly cooked (even though I do say so myself), lovely and moist and flaking wonderfully off the bones. The crème fraîche mixed into the juices to create a deliciously creamy accompaniment to the fennel and potatoes, which worked extremely well with the fish. If Rachel Khoo can whip it up in her tiny kitchen then I certainly can, and did, in mine. 

My second new recipe of the week was another fish dish, Oven-Roast Salmon with a Mustard & Parsley Crust from Lorraine Pascale’s Home Cooking Made Easy. The more I use this book the more convinced I am that no one tested any of the recipes or indeed proof-read it at all, because if you make the recipe as stated you would have been putting the fish into a cold oven – there was nothing to tell you to pre-heat the oven (ok, I can overlook that as everyone knows to do this), but more crucially there was no oven temperature even given…sloppy, very sloppy! So with the oven pre-heating to a temperature of my choice I made the topping for the salmon and pressed it firmly onto the top of the fillets, then I prepared my vegetables for the steamer and sat down with a cup of tea and waited for hubby to get home. Cooking was simply a matter of steaming the potatoes and green beans and popping the salmon in the oven – lovely and easy for a Monday evening. The salmon was light, moist and incredibly tasty with the crispy breadcrumb topping, the slight sweetness in the crust was a pleasing addition to the dish. 

Recipe Count: 141
New Target: 156

Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 43

After the excitement of cooking our Come Dine with Me meals I felt that we should slum it a bit with some more fairly standard fare and so I decided to make a Pizza, the Marinara Pizza from Gino’s Italian Escape to be exact. I whipped up the dough and left it to prove while I got on with making the sauce for the topping, which was very simple and took no time at all. Because the recipe made two pizzas I decided to make the topping slightly different on the second one just to mix things up so I added roasted peppers and ricotta to that one along with the marinara sauce and a few olives for good measure. The base was incredibly light and I didn’t feel stuffed like you can do with bought pizzas, they weren’t overly bready but just crisp enough to hold the topping and not become soggy. Really easy to make and greatly enjoyed while watching Strictly (who is not enjoying watching a Hairy Biker galumph around the dancefloor?!).

Having enjoyed a very nice week at home it seemed a bit mean to send hubby back to work without something tasty in his lunchbox, so I made Grated Chocolate & Almond Cake from Delia’s Cakes. Apart from the hassle of having to grate chocolate (without letting it melt in your hands) this was incredibly easy to make and the icing was even more so. I remember my mum making a similar grated chocolate cake when I was younger (it may even have been the same recipe, thanks Delia!) and I always really enjoyed it, there’s something about the texture of that grated chocolate and the bitterness of the chocolate icing that together with the slight nuttiness from the ground almonds work really well. The fact that it’s now been completely demolished means that it must have been a success, but the question now is which cake to make next?

Recipe Count: 139
New Target: 156