Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 36

I’ve really been enjoying my baking recently, and hubby has enjoyed his afternoon tea and cake at work so I thought to keep the tradition going this week I’d make the Passion Fruit Cake from the Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook. I diligently made the passion fruit curd the night before so that it could cool and thicken in time for me to use, though it did mean there was more chance that there’d be none left by the time it came to actually use it – I absolutely love passion fruit, but in this case I did manage to resist. I found the finished cake a little disappointing I have to admit, the zing of the passion fruit doesn’t really shine through and I think that if I’d put the fruit juice directly into the cake it would have been more impact than making it into a curd first. My other slight niggle is that the recipe stated that the flour should be half white and half wholemeal, I have to disagree here I think it would have been much nicer with just white, the lack of passion fruit flavour meant that all you could taste was the wholemeal. As much as I love passion fruit, this just did not do it justice!

 

After coming across a couple of green peppers at the back of the fridge I decided to make Paneer-stuffed Peppers from Anjum’s New Indian, a book I have not made enough use of recently. In the past I’ve been put off trying paneer in Indian restaurants because they describe it as ‘cottage cheese’, and this is something that has never appealed to me at all, but I have to say that I find it like a cross between halloumi and feta. The peppers are roasted in the oven while the stuffing is prepared and cooked, and then they go back under the grill for a brief period to brown on top. I think my only issue was that my peppers were slightly on the small side so I had some leftover stuffing, but I served that up on the side anyway. There was a really nice heat to the spices and the cheese had absorbed so much of the flavour, I served them with a green salad as I didn’t want the meal to be too heavy and this was absolutely perfect.

 

For some reason this week I’ve decided that stuffing is the way to go, as my next recipe was Spanish Stuffed Marrow from BBC Good Food Magazine. I couldn’t tell you why I chose two stuffed vegetable recipes at once, but I guess I just took one idea and went with it! I love Spanish flavours and hubby is a huge fan of chorizo so this jumped out at me as soon as I saw it in the magazine, yet it has still taken me a long time to actually make it (I think it was in an autumn issue last year, oops!). Packed full of chorizo, peppers, tomatoes, paprika and topped with manchego cheese this was a beautifully balanced dish and evocative of several wonderful evenings in Barcelona. The crispy topping really made a nice contrast to the tender marrow and the wonderfully spiced filling, served with a simple green salad this was perfect midweek dinner and I give it two very enthusiastic thumbs up!

Recipe Count: 119
New Target: 156