A mezze lunch

We had a friend over for lunch today, so I decided to do a mezze.

Recipe:
104. Elderflower and passionfruit cooler
105. Nigellan flatbread
106. Sticky semolina cake
107. Red kidney bean dip
108. Herbed bulgar wheat and nut salad
109. Green fatoush
110. Golden cardamom chicken with crispy-onion spiced rice

I warned my friend not to eat a big breakfast.

Source: #104 from Forever Summer, #105 from Domestic Goddess, #106-110 from Feast.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Elderflower cordial (bought from Ikea, I've also seen it in an Italian continental deli), I substituted sesame seeds for the nigella seeds (hard to source, methinks), rosewater and orangeflower water from a Middle Eastern store, dried barberries and pomegranate molasses from the same store, and I couldn't find pinenuts (the only packet Safeway had was $10, I don't think so) or a pomegranate.

Preparation and cooking process:
Step 1. Started last night, which was to mix up the marinade ingredients for the chicken. Which meant that every time we opened the fridge, we got a strong whiff of onions and garlic. Phwoor!

Step 2. I mixed together the flatbread ingredients in the breadmaker, set to the dough setting.

Step 3. Then I turned to the semolina cake. I made the syrup, put that into the fridge, and mixed up the cake ingredients, and put that into the oven for 30 minutes. I didn't have a square baking tin, so just used my round tin.

Step 4. Make the dip. I processed the onion and garlic, zested the lime, cooked the onion-garlic mixture, added beans, tomato paste and spices, and the lime juice. Left to cool.

Step 5. Soak bulgar wheat and dried barberries in some boiling water.

Step 6. I got the rice and spices ready in the rice cooker, but didn't turn it on.

Step 7. I poured the syrup over the cake, at which stage it promptly started leaking out of the tin. This made me panic a bit, I didn't want to have a large flashing trail inviting the sugar-ants, I could imagine my whole cake covered in ants, arghhhh! Once the syrup had been absorbed by the cake, I transferred it to a plate, and over to the table.

Step 8. I rolled out the flatbread, and covered it with a clean teatowel to prove.

Step 9. I finished off the bulgar wheat and nut salad, and processed the dip.

Step 10. I made the elderflower and passionfruit cooler.

Step 11. I put the flatbread in the oven, and was desperately looking for more trays to put the pitta breads on, when my friend came.

We then ate the dip with the flatbread, at which stage I went back into the kitchen.

Step 12. Turn on rice cooker.

Step 13. Assemble fatoush.

Step 14. Dip chicken into cornflour and then the egg. This was a bit weird because I'm used to dipping it into egg first, and then the flour. Cook chicken. At this stage, I realised that I hadn't cooked the onions (they were chopped up ready on a plate), but didn't care. So I left out the onions and the pinenuts from the rice.

End result: There was so much food! I suspect I went a bit overboard with the food. Guess what we'll be eating for the rest of the week.

Drink: Elderflower and passionfruit cooler. This was nice and refreshing, surprisingly better than I expected. A bit messy to drink, every time my friend looked over at me, I was slurping up a string of passionfruit.



Entree: Red kidney bean dip with the flatbread. This was a great starter - the bread was fresh and hot, and went well with the dip. My friend remarked about the amount of garlic in the dip... Hubby ate the dip, but didn't like it that much.

Main course: The chicken was absolutely fabulous, I loved the crispy outside. While I was eating the chicken, I made ecstatic mmmmm noises, and my friend asked Hubby, "Does she always do that?" And he said "Yes". Traitor. The rice was aromatic. The bulgar wheat salad had an interesting strong taste, which my friend did like. I liked the fatoush, it provided a fresh and crunchy contrast.

Dessert: I found this to be very sweet, I especially liked the almond on top.

Repeatability: Yes to the cooler, flatbread, fatoush and chicken, no to the rest. They were all nice as a once-off.

Cost: Entree $5. The dip was enough to serve out in 3 individual ramekins, and I made 6 flatbreads, of which there's 3 leftover. Drink $3 for a large jug, which still had about 1/3 leftover from lunch. Main course, I downsized quantities and still didn't end up cooking all of the chicken I had marinading, $15 (leaving out the pinenuts), $6 for the bulgar wheat salad, and $5 for the fatoush. $8 for the cake.

Mess: Hell yeah. I just about used up every piece of crockery and utensil that I had in the kitchen. My friend felt sorry for me and even started washing up.

Special utensils: Too many to mention. The food processor came into use a number of times, breadmaker, micrograter, rolling pin, rice cooker, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Squashed sultana scones

I made these for breakfast this morning.

Recipe:
103. Welshcakes

Source: How to be a Domestic Goddess

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: Rub butter into flour. I did this with my fingertips, and I was very impatient in doing so. I couldn't imagine doing this on a weekday morning. Add sugar, allspice, sultanas and egg. Then put into fridge for 20 minutes, during which time I got around to washing up last night's dishes.

Cooking process: When I took the mixture out of the fridge, I still found that the mixture did not adhere together properly, so I added about 1/4 cup of water, which made the dough quite sticky. Roll out and cut out, then cook for a few minutes each side.

End result: It tasted like a sultana scone, very pleasant, we ate them as they were, straight out of the pan.

Repeatability: As I said, I couldn't imagine making these at 5am on a weekday morning, but as a leisurely weekend breakfast, yes.

Cost: $4, and there's enough for tomorrow's breakfast.

Mess: There's a bit of mess, given the pastry-making process, flouring the board, rolling with a rolling pin.

Special utensils: Rolling pin and a crinkled cutter.

Rice pudding dessert follows...

After the chicken strips, I promised Hubby that I would make a dessert.

Recipe:
102.Risotto-inspired rice pudding

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil. As I had mentioned in #86, I had made vanilla sugar previously (and still had heaps in stock).

Cooking process: Heat up milk. Separately, melt butter and sugar, then add arborio rice, then add a little bit of milk at a time. Stir. Stir. Stir.

End result: I liked it, sticky, gooey, and very caramelly. It actually reminded me of sweetened condensed milk, but with rice added - yum. Mr Fussy, however, said it was too much, too rich, and only ate about half of his.

Repeatability: No. I can only repeat ones that we both like.

Cost: $2. Even though Nigella specifies that it serves one, it was very adequate for both of us.

Mess: It did leave a sticky gooey residue in my pan, and this morning when I was cleaning it, it did require some time to clean off. And I suppose I should wash my dishes every night, but oh well.

Special utensils: Nil.

Yoghurt chicken strips

This was last night's dinner.

Recipe:
101. Chicken strips

Source: How to Eat. This is a suggestion from the Children's chapter.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: All it is is chicken in a marinade of yoghurt, milk, honey and soy. Simple.

Preparation: On Saturday morning, I cut up the chicken breast, and chucked it into the marinade.

Cooking process: Just a matter of frying up the chicken pieces until cooked through. I didn't bother wiping it with a kitchen towel. So simple.

End result: Served with beans, potatoes and chilli sauce. It was a nice and simple dinner, but nothing to write home about.

Cost: About $10, including the vegies. One chicken breast fed both of us.

Mess: Nothing too bad, as I left the frying pan to soak while we were eating, so it all cleaned off easily afterwards.

Special utensils: Nil.

Lucky #100

I made this on Friday night.

Recipe:
100. Braised dried shitake mushrooms with soba noodles

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I don't know what the difference between Japanese soy sauce and regular soy sauce is. Apart from the soba noodles, all the rest of the ingredients were in my cupboard from previous recipes.

Preparation: Soak mushies in hot water.

Cooking process: Stir fry mushrooms, add liquid ingredients, and cook noodles separately. Because I'm impatient, I didn't wait for the recommended 15 minutes for most of the liquid to evaporate. Then toss noodles with soy sauce and sesame oil, mix all ingredients together, and top with sesame oil and coriander.

End result: I did find the mushrooms to be rather salty, and the noodles were a nice contrast to the mushrooms. It was okay. However, my husband took one bite, and said it wasn't really his thing...

Repeatability: No

Cost: $4 for two serves (although admittedly one serve went straight to the bin)

Mess: Nothing too bad.

Special utensils: Nil

Crab pasta and raspberry yoghurt

This was last night's dinner.

Recipe:
98. Fine pasta with crab
99. Raspberry and oatmeal swirls

Source: #98 from How to Eat, #99 from Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Sssh. I bought canned crab meat. But don't tell anyone. For the dessert, I didn't know what Hobnob biscuits were, so hopefully arrowroot biscuits were an acceptable substitute? But reading the title, I suspect that I should have chosen something more oatmeal-y.

Preparation: Zest lime with the MICRO-GRATER! Or, more accurately, start to zest lime, get scared of zesting fingertips, and then Hubby finishes it off for you. Chop garlic, chilli and spring onions.

Cooking process: Cook linguine. Cook garlic, chilli, spring onions and the other herbs; add crab and wine, cook for about 10 minutes. Add coriander and lime zest, squeeze in a bit of lime juice. Toss all together.

Place the frozen raspberries into a food processor with a bit of icing sugar, and process. Layer raspberries, yoghurt and biscuit crumbs in glasses.

End result: The pasta was okay, quite winey, it wasn't fantastic though. The raspberry yoghurt was quite sour too, Nigella suggests having this for breakfast, I can only imagine having this for breakfast if you want to walk around for the rest of the day with a sour-lemon look on your face. Probably not the most attractive expression.

Repeatability: No to both

Cost: $5 for the pasta, which was enough for two servings. $4 for the raspberry yoghurt, which gave us four servings (I put the other two on top of our porridge this morning).

Mess: Not too bad.

Special utensils: A micro-grater, food processor, and a rolling pin.

Micro-graters

After Redhead's suggestion of micro-graters, I swear, I was just going out for a walk at lunchtime, and I happened to walk past these, which were on sale:

I looked. And I was going to walk away. But they were on sale! And I couldn't decide which one would be more useful - the medium or the fine. So I bought both.

They cost $25 each, down from their usual $40.

I used the fine one for the first time last night, and I was very nervous because it is VERY SHARP. I could imagine my fingers being zested along with the lime. Mmm, wouldn't that make a nice addition to the pasta? Hubby took over, because it looked like a tool from the workshop, and he's an expert on workshop tools.

So, thanks for the suggestion Redhead.

[Edited to add:]

As for the performance, they are very sharp, which I am not used to. This means that one grate along the surface area of the lime or lemon is all that is needed, and then if you continue in the same spot, you get pith. The zest comes out very fine - no further chopping required. I do need to send a knife up the back afterwards to ensure I get every little bit of zest, as I find that it gets trapped between the back and the plastic cover. Cleaning is a very careful swipe with the cloth (going the wrong way), and a good rinse running down the back of the grater, although I haven't yet used the larger two-way grater so not sure how I will clean that with the cloth. I am still nervous when using it, I get I just have to get used to it.

Double potato and feta bake

We had this for dinner last night.

Recipe:
97. Double potato and halloumi bake

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I've made this dish before, as in Before Project, and I tried halloumi for the first (and last) time; I found that I didn't like it, it was too much like polystyrene and not cheesy. I still had half a packet of feta leftover from the Greek lamb stew, so happily substituted that instead.

Preparation: Chop up vegetables, it's very easy, you don't even need to peel the garlic cloves.

Cooking process: Cook vegetables in oven for about 45 minutes, add cheese and put back into the oven for about 10 minutes.

End result: Served with some pieces of ham. This was a great and comforting meal. The vegetables were absolutely superb.


Repeatability: Yes. It feels very healthy, see mum, I am getting my quotient of vegetables!

Cost: I'm guessing about $8.

Mess: Not really. Even the tray was easy to clean (non-stick).

Special utensils: Just a large roasting tray.

Passionfruit fool

Given that I had some leftover double cream, fresh passionfruit, and a bit of brandy, what else could I make but...

Recipe:
96. Passionfruit fool

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I didn't have Cointreau, but I did have brandy (leftover from the half coq au vin).

Preparation: Pulp passionfruits. I used 4, given that I only had a little double cream leftover from the corn pudding.

Cooking process: Mix cream and icing sugar, lemon juice and brandy, add passionfruit pulp. That's it!

End result: I served this with arrowroot biscuits, since that's what I had in the cupboard. And it was a very nice dessert to finish off a filling day.

Repeatability: I probably wouldn't go out of my way to make this again; the only reason I made this was because of the leftover double cream. It's nice and all, but I keep thinking about how fattening it is...

Cost: $2. I had bought my passionfruits for a very good price.

Mess: No.

Special utensils: Whisk, and glasses to serve in.

Mushrooms on toast

This was Sunday night's dinner.

Recipe:
95. Mushrooms on toast

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: Quarter mushrooms. I only had enough mushrooms for 1 serving, so crossed my fingers and hoped that it would be enough for both of us.

Cooking process: Cook mushrooms, add Marsala, pepper, and sour cream. Toast bread (which I had baked on Saturday night in the breadmaker).

End result: What a completely fabulous supper! It was tasty and comforting, and a light supper to counterbalance the rather large lunch. Completely fabulous, cheap and quick.

Repeatability: Absolutely!

Cost: $3. And it did serve the two of us; we had one piece of toast each.

Mess: Not really.

Special utensils: No.

The famous and trashy...

This was Sunday's lunch.

Recipe:
93. Ham in coca-cola
94. Sweetcorn pudding

Source: Nigella Bites. I chose this recipe over the How to Eat one, primarily because this one specified treacle, which I had leftover from the stem gingerbread, and I don't know what else I'd be using treacle for.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: During last week's shopping at Safeway, I noticed pickled pork in the meat section. I took that as a sign that it was time to try this dish. I couldn't find demerara sugar at the supermarket, and sadly Myer's gourmet food section has now closed, leaving me despondently lacking in sweetness. I substituted brown sugar.

Preparation: I soaked my pickled pork in boiling water, just in case it was salty, and then tipped out the water and started again.

Cooking process: Put pork in saucepan, add onion, add Coke. Leave simmering for about 2 hours. In the meantime, I made the sweetcorn pudding, which was just a matter of mixing eggs, sweetcorn, creamed corn, milk, double cream, flour, baking powder and salt, and pouring into an ovenproof dish. Cook in the oven for 1 hour. Then fish the ham out of the saucepan. I didn't have any skin on my pickled pork, so I didn't bother scoring, but I did pop a few cloves in randomly. Very randomly. Then I poured the treacle on top, added mustard powder and brown sugar, and put it into the oven for about 10 minutes.

End result: Served with roasted potatoes sprinkled with parsley.

The ham was really very good. It wasn't too salty, it had a nice sweet crust, it was really very nice. The sweetcorn pudding was very ordinary.

I should also say that the ham has been a part of fantastic sandwiches.

Repeatability: Yes for the ham, no for the sweetcorn pudding.

Cost: $14 for 1.7kg of pickled pork, so $17 overall. I reduced the pudding by about 20% to take into account the dimensions of the cans, about $8.

Mess: I had to turn over my ham while it was cooking in the saucepan, and it did make a bit of a splash. Maybe I'm just clumsy.

Special utensils: I was a bit worried about cooking Coca-Cola in my stainless steel saucepan, and asked my husband if he thought it might react? But I don't think it did, although I must say after I finished up washing, I noticed that the saucepan was super-shiny; I'm not sure whether to credit that to my amazing dishwashing skills or the Coca-Cola.

Healthy AND tasty

This was last night's absolutely fantastic dinner.

Recipe:
92. Aromatic chilli beef noodle soup

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I did buy ready-cut up steak pieces (makes it easier), substituted shelf-ready noodles for the dried egg noodles, and only had half a green chilli (I had popped it into the freezer from #88), so used that instead of the dried chilli. Also, there was a small sample of piri-piri sauce which was in one of the showbags from the Good Food and Wine Show, which was very convenient. I doubled the servings to serve 2 of us.

Preparation: The beef is marinated for 30 minutes. I then made the stock, cooked the noodles, and cut up the greens.

Cooking process: Then I stir-fried the beef, picked out the aromatic bits out of the stock, added the greens and noodles, and plonked all together into a bowl.

End result: Man, I could rave on about this meal for ages! Suffice to say, the marinade is absolutely tasty, the soup is so fragrant, it's so healthy - I love it. Nigella is a genius.

Repeatability: Absolutely! In fact, I have more noodles, a bunch of pak choi, AND another 240g steak pieces in the freezer. It must be a sign...

Cost: I found that doubling the recipe gave us 3 generous servings, $10.

Mess: It does use 2 saucepans and 1 wok, but, I don't really care...

Special utensils: Nil.

Advice: I do recommend buying the steak pieces in preference, it just makes the end bit so much easier; no cutting required.

A quick Saturday lunch

I made this for Saturday's lunch, in between rushing around for appointments and all. Saturdays are more hectic than weekdays!

Recipe:
91. Potato and onion hash

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: Cut up onion, dice potato. I doubled this for two people.

Cooking process: The cooking does take 30 minutes or so. I actually found that at the end of 30 minutes, my potato was still a little crunchy, so I put the whole thing into the microwave for a few minutes, which cooked it perfectly. I did find that my mixture stuck to the pan too, so I also had little black bits too.

End result: Normally I do cook fried eggs on both sides, but this time I did sunny-side up for me...I served this with the leftover couscous from #88. It was tasty and relatively quick, I think however that there was too much cayenne for Hubby's liking.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: About $2.

Mess: Yes, the potato/onion mixture stuck to my pan. Grrrr.

Special utensils: Zilch.

Mushie night

This was last night's dinner. I've finally caught up on blogging.

Recipe:
89. Mushroom udon soup
90. Restrained mushroom risotto

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had dried shitake mushrooms and udon noodles in the cupboard. I couldn't find liquid dashi at the Asian grocery store, but did find a dried shitake dashi - so, why not? As for the risotto, Safeway didn't sell any packets of mixed mushrooms, although they did have separate packets of enoki, shitake, and portobello, so I just bought standard mushrooms. I didn't use porcini stock, I didn't even use my packet of dried porcini (mainly because I didn't want to wait for the soaking time), I just used a chicken stock cube.

Preparation: Soak shitake in some hot water for 10 minutes.

Cooking process: I shortcutted the process, by pouring everything into a saucepan, adding the soy sauce and dashi powder, and then bringing to the boil. While this was cooking, I cut up the onion and mushrooms, and measured out the rice. For the risotto, fry the onion and mushrooms, add rice, add vermouth, and stock. Given that I was using a stock cube, I heated up a cup of water in the microwave, added the crumbled cube directly to the rice, and added the water a little at a time. Add udon noodles to the soup. Continue to stir risotto.

End result: Served with coriander and sesame oil. The soup felt so healthy, and it was very tasty. I've never tried dashi before. Cheap, fast to prepare, healthy, and tasty - what more could you ask for?

We were quite full after the soup, so didn't have any room for the risotto. I did serve out a spoonful so I could take a photo. Served with parmesan cheese and parsley.

And it was very tasty - every time I eat risotto, I am reminded anew how much I like it.

Repeatability: Yes for both

Cost: $3 for the soup, and $3 for the risotto.

Mess: Not really.

Special utensils: Zilch.

Chicken and tsatsiki

This was Wednesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
88. Chicken with spring onion, chilli and greek yoghurt

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: Marinate chicken in lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. I skipped the requirement for oil.

Cooking process: I grilled the chicken, while that was happening, I made the tsatsiki and couscous. Grilling did take a little while - I had plenty of time (in fact, too much time at the end).

End result: I was worried about this meal, because I remembered that Sarah didn't like it very much; but when I tasted the tsatsiki (to see if it required salt!), I couldn't help myself sneaking more and more tastes. Yum.

This would be a great summer meal (not quite appropriate for the depths of winter though). The tsatsiki was especially tasty, and went perfectly with the chicken.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: I halved this recipe, and still ended up with 1.5 chicken breasts leftover. I used free-range chicken breasts. $15.

Mess: Not too much.

Special utensils: A meat mallet to flatten the chicken. I grilled the chicken, so a griller.

Sloppy joes

I made this on Tuesday night.

Recipe:
87. Sloppy joes

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: None.

Preparation: Put bacon, onion, carrots, herbs, and celery into the food processor. Easy.

Cooking process: Cook vegetable mixture for about 10 minutes, add mince, add soup and Worcestershire sauce. Cook for about 40 minutes.

End result: I like to delude myself that if I add green stuff, it makes it healthier.


And it was just like a hamburger. With the leftovers, I cooked some pasta, and then added the mince mixture as a pasta sauce for the next day.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $10, which allowed for 2 servings at dinner and 2 at lunch.

Mess: It can be a bit messy to eat.

Special utensils: Food processor

Victoria sponge

This was made at the same time as the stew.

Recipe:
85. Victoria Sponge
86. Vanilla sugar

Source: The sponge recipe is in How To Eat, and then repeated in Domestic Goddess, the vanilla sugar is from Domestic Goddess.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: For the middle, I had the leftover Seville orange curd, and some mascarpone cheese.

Preparation: All ingredients are mixed in the food processor. Love it! As for the vanilla sugar, this had been made weeks ago, but I never had used it, up to now. It's just a matter of pouring some sugar into a jar, and adding a vanilla pod or two.

Cooking process: Given that I had the stew in the oven, I could only cook one cake pan at a time, each one for 25 minutes.

End result: The cakes smelt so nice while they were cooking. They were sandwiched with mascarpone and orange curd, and sprinkled with vanilla sugar. Although I still had curd leftover, I threw out the rest.

It was so nice, I felt very professional - it's the first double-layer cake I've made.

I gave a piece to one of my workmates, and he thought that it was nice, but was expecting something a bit lighter and fluffier (from his experience of his mum's spongecakes). Oh well.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $4 for the cake, and $5 for the sugar, but there's heaps of sugar still left.

Mess: The food processor does the mixing for you, there's no rolling out of pastry, and it comes off the springform tins easily.

Special utensils: Food processor, and two springform pans (I didn't have 21cm, so I just put them into 23cm, so it was flatter than it should be).

Greek lamb stew

This was Sunday night's dinner.

Recipe:
84. Greek lamb stew

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: None, but I downsized this meal by 35%.

Preparation: Chop up onions, garlic, celery, pick thyme, and cut carrots.

Cooking process: Brown meat, cook vegetables, then it all gets put into the oven for about 2 hours. Given the dimensions of my pot, I cleverly set aside 1 cup of the juices to cook the pasta with later on. When the meat-vegetable mixture was ready, I then cooked the pasta, firstly in water, and then in the cooking juices.

End result: Served with feta and parsley. I did end up serving the carrots, which were a treat. The lamb was tender, and the feta added a nice salty touch. It tasted great with the pasta.

Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: $31, and I believe there's about 8 servings (in the reduced quantity). We had 4 servings that night and the next day for lunch, and then I think there's another 4 servings in the freezer (without the pasta and the feta, of course).

Mess: It wasn't too bad, the meal is cooked in one pot, mainly in the oven, and then it's just a matter of cooking some pasta.

Special utensils: I made it in my French Oven.

Chicken pie

I made this for Sunday lunch - yes, I'm behind in posting...

Recipe:
83. Chicken pie

Source: How to Eat. I think I've made this years before, from a Nigella recipe published somewhere, although I did buy frozen pastry instead of using my own.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: The chicken was leftover from Saturday night's schmalzy chicken.

Preparation: Making pastry from scratch again. Shred chicken.

Cooking process: Make a white sauce, to which I added the peas and chicken, and then covered with pastry. I cooked the pie for about 30 minutes.

End result: Served with tomato sauce, it was a very nice pie. I loved the sauce, so tasty. The pastry could have been better.


Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: $3. I didn't count the chicken as that was costed in Saturday night's meal.

Mess: I do make a mess when I make pastry.

Special utensils: Food processor and rolling pin for the pastry, and an ovenproof dish for the pie.

Chicken and wedges

Recipe:
81. Schmalzy chicken
82. Potato wedges

Source: Feast. I must say that I feel a deep sense of satisfaction every time I choose a non-HTE meal, yet I keep getting drawn back to that book - it's still my favourite.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: No - standard.

Preparation: Pull the chicken fat out from inside the neck hole, and melt this in a saucepan. Pour over the chicken, add salt. Cut potatoes into 8 wedges, put into a mixture of oil, cayenne pepper and paprika.

Cooking process: Put into the oven - I'm not sure how long I ended up letting it cook for, because when I pulled it out to check, it was still pink inside.

End result: The chicken was crispy, yet I found it requiring a sauce (I added chilli sauce - yum). The wedges were lovely - not as crisp as shop-bought ones, but still nice and spicy.


Repeatability: No to the chicken (I prefer the one from #3), but yes to the spuds.

Cost: The free-range chicken cost $8 (I had just bought normal sized), the potatoes cost about $2. Total cost of meal $10.

Mess: My lovely non-stick roasting tray should mean that there's not much of a mess. I think that the potato tray is a different story though - I don't even want to go and take a look.

Special utensils: Just have a few pans to roast them in.

Cream of chicken soup

Recipe:
80. Cream of chicken soup

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I substituted one big leek for the suggested dwarf leeks. And can I just say that my free-range chicken breast fillet was HUGE - I think Foghorn Leghorn is missing an important part of his anatomy.

Preparation: Pretty easy, cut up leeks finely. As my leek weighed under 300g, I didn't abide by Nigella's suggestion, and used the green parts as well as the white bits.

Cooking process: In one pan, cook the leeks; in the other, poach the chicken breast in the milk and stock. Mix both together, cut up the chicken breast and add to the soup, then stir, process, and serve up.

End result: It's quite nice, better than the canned variety. Not too bad, and not too hard. It would have been better if I had made some bread with it, but I wasn't going to wait 3 hours for the bread to bake.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $9 for about 3 servings.

Mess: I haven't actually gone back into the kitchen to have a look, but there's probably two milky saucepans, and a food processor to clean up.

Special utensils: Food processor - be careful, as the mixture is quite hot.

Scotch pancakes

Recipe:
79. Scotch pancakes

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Not really, all the ingredients are normal cupboard items (golden syrup was leftover from the recent gingerbread).

Preparation: Mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, mix both together. Can you believe that I needed to mix them by hand!!!!!!

Cooking process: Although Nigella suggests to heat a non-stick pan without oil, I found that my first batch stuck to the pan (maybe it's just my pan), so I added oil to the rest, and there were no more incidents.

End result: I ate mine with mixed berry jam, Hubby had his with vegemite. They remind me of crumpets. I am not so sure that they would be so good lukewarm.

Repeatability: Yes, they were a pleasure to eat. We ate the whole lot, but I don't think that my mixture made as much as Nigella insinuated.

Cost: $2.

Mess: Not too bad, just a few battered bowls...

Special utensils: You'll need a non-stick pan, but check if you need to oil it.

"You can have a tart tonight - and then something to eat afterwards..."

Recipe:
77. Rich shortcrust
78. Seville orange curd tart

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Given that Seville oranges have such a short season, I had bought some more from David Jones so I could make this tart. I also only had about 25g of muscovado sugar leftover, so made up the rest with brown sugar.

Preparation: There's a longer preparation process than what I initially thought. So, mix butter and flour together, put this into the freezer. In the meantime, start zesting and juicing the oranges. Put all pastry ingredients into the food processor, put pastry ball into fridge for 20 minutes. Continue zesting and juicing the oranges. I hate zesting, by the way. Seville oranges have a LOT of pips. Roll out pastry, put into tart pan, put in fridge for 20 minutes.

Cooking process: Pastry is blind-baked for about 25 minutes, first with beans, then the beans are removed. In the meantime, cook orange curd in a saucepan. It thickened very nicely and easily. Pour curd into pastry case. By this stage, my pastry had shrunk a lot.

End result: I was worried that my curd wasn't setting hard (double-checking the book to see whether it needed to be put into the oven to set), so placed it into the fridge for about an hour. It was fine when I took it out, and went perfectly with a scoop of vanilla icecream.

It tasted fine, it cut well, and the curd didn't leak over after it had been cut. Still, I was not very happy with the shrinkage - check it out.

What did I do wrong? I did put it into the fridge before it went into the oven, I had beans in there...advice please?

Repeatability: Yes, only if I learn how to get pastry right. This won't be part of the repertoire if external parties are coming over. More practice is needed...

Cost: $1 for the pastry, and about $8.50 for the curd. There's a heap of curd leftover, I might have to do a Sarah and make a sponge cake with the rest (sorry Sarah).

Mess: I have said before that pastry-making makes a huge mess in my kitchen. Maybe it's just me, but there's flour everywhere.

Special utensils: Flan tin, food processor, rolling pin.

Oh, and the X-rated title? Little joke for Hubby.

Cottage pie

We had this for Thursday's dinner (and finished the leftovers on Friday night).

Recipe:
76. Cottage pie (with uncooked meat)

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: None.

Preparation: Peel and boil potatoes; put onion, carrot, garlic and celery into the food processor.

Cooking process: Cook for about 40 minutes, adding ingredients as you go. I couldn't be bothered measuring out half a tin of tomatoes, so all 400g went in. Mash potatoes, then you can put cheese on top, and place under the griller. The mixture fit into 4 ramekins, although I could have done with a bit more potato.

End result: Delicious. Very good comfort food. The Marsala is magnificent - I kept sneaking taste tests while cooking it because the Marsala smelt so good. It's quite a sweet mixture, or maybe that's because of my excess tomatoes, so I do admit that I added tabasco sauce to last night's repeat.



Repeatability: Yes

Cost: 4 servings (4 ramekins), $7.

Mess: It doesn't seem to have made much of a mess. Probably the food processor adds to the ease of this recipe.

Special utensils: A food processor makes chopping the vegies so easy. You'll need a potato masher, and a griller if you want melted cheese on top.

Grandma's Bean and Barley Soup

Recipe:
75. Grandma's Bean and Barley Soup

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I couldn't find dried butter beans at Safeway. I couldn't find any dried beans except for lentils. So I bought canned butter beans.

Preparation: I soaked the barley overnight. Can I just tell you that it's very fiddly and annoying to peel the skins off already cooked canned beans? I did about 3/4 of the can, but gave up with the last 1/4, and just poured them in whole. The vegetables are just chopped in the food processor - very easy, I suppose to make up for the annoying fiddly beans.

Cooking process: Put vegetables, stock, potatoes, beans and barley in pan, cook for 2 hours.

End result: We took some to work today, but Hubby commented that he would have preferred something with a bit more vigour and excitement. So when I served up the repeat for dinner, I added parmesan cheese, more pepper to both and chilli oil to mine. It's definitely better with the chilli oil.

Repeatability: No, nice as a once-off, but we've had better soups before.

Cost: $6 for 5 servings.

Mess: There was an impressive pile of vegie discards while I was cooking - parsnip peel, carrot peel, onion skins, bean skins and potato peels. That's it!

Special utensils: Food processor makes chopping the vegies easy.

Stem-ginger gingerbread

This was made on Sunday, but we didn't eat it until Monday, when we took some to work, and more on Tuesday.

Recipe:
74. Stem-ginger gingerbread

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had never bought treacle before, so it was weird to me. I had stem ginger in my cupboard from previously, unfortunately I bought it for full price from Myer, and not as part of any 50% or 75% off sale.

Preparation: I used the food processor to mix the flour, spices and butter together. In a separate saucepan, I melted the treacle with the golden syrup; and in yet another pan, dissolved the muscovado sugar in the milk. Separately, I grated the stem ginger, which was a bit of a messy process, given how small the pieces were and how sticky they were from being in the syrup. Then I beat the egg, and mixed all ingredients together.

Cooking process: Bake for about 1 hour in the oven.

End result: It was very spicy and moist. I gave a piece to my colleague, and he couldn't even tell it was gingerbread. We had some on Monday night with vanilla ice-cream.

Repeatability: It was a nice cake, but a once-off. There's better out there. We also have some in the freezer if we ever get gingerbread cravings.

Cost: $5.

Mess: Yes, the treacle-golden syrup mixture left a sticky residue in the saucepan, there was a milky saucepan to wash up, and various bowls and utensils.

Special utensils: I used my food processor, but I suppose you could use your fingers. You'll need a grater for the stem ginger. Also make sure you have greaseproof paper and alfoil on hand.

Half-coq au vin

I made this for dinner tonight, it took about 1.5 hours.

Recipe:
73. Half-coq au vin

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Can I just say that the bacon meant that I made another extra trip to the supermarket yesterday?

Preparation: As I had just gotten home from work, and was hungry, I started heating up the wine while I was getting the other ingredients ready (and went out into the garden to get some thyme). I didn't realise that the spices were strained off, so had chopped up the celery, the garlic, and the parsley sprigs. Oh well.

Cooking process: Brown chicken, cook onion and bacon, add mushrooms and baby onions (I bought a bag of pickling onions, hope they were the same thing), add flour, stock and the strained reduced wine. Then leave for 45 minutes - 1 hour.


At the end, you heat up some brandy in a ladle, wait until it alights, then pour over the stew. I was very nervous, and imagining myself setting fire to my hair, or setting fire to the house. It also took about a minute for the brandy to light, I was almost ready to just pour it in as is. But it all ended up working fine. Suppose I should just trust Nigella, hey?

End result:
It was very nice and tasty, perfect for a cold winter's day. There's lots leftover for lunch tomorrow.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: About $19 for 4-5 servings.

Mess: No, not too bad.

Special utensils: I made it in my French Oven. You'll also need a metal ladle.

Basic vanilla ice-cream

I made this yesterday just before the lahmacun.

Recipe:
72. Basic vanilla ice-cream

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: It's just the same as the custard (#48), but with more sugar. I am building up quite a collection of egg whites in my freezer now.

Preparation: Make custard, same process as before. Infuse vanilla pod in single cream, beat eggs and sugar, then mix together, put into pan, and stir for 8-10 minutes.

Cooking process: It didn't thicken as nicely this time! Just slightly; it was still a bit runny. But I got up to the 10 minute stage, and I wasn't about to find out what split custard looked like, so plunged it into the water. Then I added the double cream, and put it into the freezer, stirring every hour for 3 hours.

End result: The sexy photo I took last night was wiped off my camera card, so all you get is a photo of the ice-cream tonight, as it's defrosting. It made 1.2 litres (the container has measurements on the side), and it's verrrrry creamy. Maybe too creamy. I don't know if I would add the double-cream next time.

Repeatability: No, nice as a one-off, but I'd still like to try the other flavours on offer.

Cost: About $9. This seems expensive compared to buying it from the shops.

Mess: Yes, a bit, the saucepan (washed and dried in between), the bowl, the spare eggwhites, the whisk, although I do admit that I licked some of these afterwards.

Special utensils: A whisk. I didn't use an ice-cream maker; as I was in the kitchen anyway, I was happy to stir every hour or so.

Advice: I'm not sure that I would add the double-cream, it makes it verrrrrrry creamy.

Lahmacun

Recipe:
71. Lahmacun

Source: How to be a Domestic Goddess

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I didn't even know there was a difference between bread flour and plain flour, but when I went shopping (yes, finally...), there was a packet of high-quality flour available, so I got that. I still had pomegranate molasses from before.

Preparation: I put the dough ingredients into the breadmaker, on the dough setting. Too easy.

Cooking process: The lamb topping was just fried for 10 minutes, with onion, garlic, spices, tomato puree, parsley and pomegranate molasses. Because you have to taste it at the end to see if it requires seasoning, I did, and it was fantastic. I couldn't stop myself from having more. And more.

When the dough is ready, it's just rolled out into 8 pizzas, the lamb topping is added, and cooked in the oven for 8-10 minutes. When it comes out, you're supposed to put a teatowel on top, but I just used alfoil on one tray, and served the other tray up immediately. Does anyone know what 'tant pis' means?

End result: Absolutely fantastic. The topping was completely scrumptious, and the flatbreads were soft and pliable.

Hubby said: Did you make this bread? You could make it with other stuff and it would be good.

Repeatability: Yes, oh yes.

Cost: $5. And while Nigella specifies that 8 flatbreads are "enough for 4 people, just", we scoffed the whole lot between us.

Mess: As I've said before, pastry and breadmaking is a messy process, because of the rolling out.

Special utensils: A breadmaker makes it easy. You also need a rolling pin and two baking trays.

Advice: Watch how much lamb topping you put on, you want to make sure it's still easy to fold up.

Pea and garlic crostini

I made this last night as an entree.

Recipe:
70. Pea and garlic crostini

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had run out of butter, and still hadn't made it to the shops to do my weekly shopping. Oh well.

Preparation and cooking process: Roast a whole garlic bulb in the oven for an hour. I had also run out of alfoil, so I wrapped it up in some greaseproof paper, put it into a ramekin, and hoped for the best. Cook baguette (the leftover from the pair from the last crostini in #18 - it had been frozen), and I toasted it under the griller. Cook peas, then everything into the food processor. Then I dashed out into the garden to grab some mint.

End result: It looks fabulously green. It tasted very garlicky - lucky both of us were eating this...


Repeatability: No, it was nice as a once-off, but we both preferred #18 to this one.

Cost: About $2.50.

Mess: It's not too bad, it's mainly done in the food processor, so quite easy.

Special utensils: Food processor

Quick meal

I haven't been making so many Nigella recipes over the last week, because I had gone shopping without meal planning beforehand. You won't believe how many recipes you are NOT able to make once you run out of butter! But I have written up a list, all ready for shopping tonight.

I made this last night when I got home from work.

Recipes:
68. Garlic mushrooms
69. Bacon and tomato hash

Source: The former from How to Eat, the latter from Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: These ingredients were what I had in my cupboard. As I said in my previous post, I had bought some super-cheap garlic oil from Myer.

Preparation: Chop up bacon, chop up tomato, chop up mushrooms.

Cooking process: I cooked both dishes simultaneously. Fry bacon until crispy, while that's happening, cook the mushrooms in garlic oil, then remove the bacon and add tomatoes into the pan, add Worcestershire sauce to one pan and vermouth to the other; then add the bacon back in. That's it.

End result: I yelled out to Hubby "Tea's ready!" and he said "Bullshit." It was THAT fast. Served with toast, it was a fantastic and satisfying tea.


I do think the parsley is needed for the bacon and tomato hash; it just adds that freshness to it. And watch out for how much vermouth you add to the mushrooms - ours were quite potent.

Repeatability: It's a great combination for a lazy, quick meal, so yes.

Cost: $6.

Mess: Just the two pans.

Special utensils: Not required.

I've been very naughty...

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past couple of days. We've been living on leftovers and cooking non-Nigella meals.

Myer had another sale starting today - their "better than stocktake, never to be repeated, history making sale". Gourmet food items are now 75% off - I bought some garlic oil, chocolate dessert and mango dessert sauces. Still no sugar there though.

I also bought a roasting pan for $20, and a couple of Jamie Oliver books for $15 each. I'm very naughty.

Bitter orange ice cream

After seeing Seville oranges in David Jones on Thursday, I decided to hold out until the Vic Market on Friday. I saved about $1.

Recipe:
67. Bitter orange ice cream

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I used Seville oranges sourced from the Vic Market; when I bought them from the fruiterer, he said "I hope you know what to do with them."

Preparation: Zest and juice. Mix with sugar and double cream. I brought out my handheld blender, and whipping it made a bit of a mess. Oops.

Cooking process: Freeze for 3-5 hours.