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