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
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