The Next Nigella

News and farewell...

2006-11-18T09:26:00.000+11:00

This is going to be a hard post for me to write. But I have good news and bad news...

The good news is that we are expecting our first child in May. I had no idea until the middle of last month, when all the clues suddenly dropped into place. A couple of the clues are scattered throughout October, such as complaining that I was getting fat and craving food other than Nigella's. We shan't talk about all the food that I ate that is on the banned list of pregnancy foods.

The bad news is what it means for this blog. Once I found out, I've been trying to eat healthier with a greater variety - food that is generally healthier than Nigella's. I'm restricted in what I can make - mayonnaise, home-made ice cream, feta, rare meat and a long list of others are restricted. I'm just not sure that I can complete this blog with full commitment.

And I hate doing that. I don't like half-finished projects (or in this case, one-third). But I have a new project now. I want to do what's best for our baby.

I will still continue to cook Nigella's recipes in the background, just not at the cracking pace of months previous. There are some recipes that are too good not to repeat, such as the butternut pumpkin and pasta soup. I also want to write about that dense chocolate loaf cake, but sadly I've also cut down on my chocolate intake as it has caffeine so we won't even think about it.

So, what have I learnt by doing this blog?
1. I don't get intimidated at looking at a long or exotic list of ingredients anymore. The list of ingredients used to determine whether I would make the effort to cook something or not.
2. I can cook with wine now, and not grape juice substitute.
3. Micro-graters are a great tool.
4. I do enjoy cooking, but appreciate a good meal when someone else cooks too.

Well, it looks like the "Feeding Babies and Small Children" chapter in How to Eat should be read carefully after all. Thanks to all for reading and supporting my blog, and welcoming me into your online community; and enjoy your cooking of Nigella's recipes.

Lots of love to you all,
The ex-Next Nigella

October 2006 assessment

2006-11-04T21:27:00.000+11:00

Number of recipes made this month: 16. I was away though...

Assessment by book:

How to Eat - last month at 85, this month at 89 (4 recipes)

Domestic Goddess - last month at 10, remaining at 10

Forever Summer - last month at 4, remaining at 4

Feast - last month at 41, this month at 51 (10 recipes)

Nigella Bites - last month at 18, this month at 20 (2 recipes)

Size of repertoire: From 97 to 109 repeatable recipes.

Cost: $154.

New toys: I did get a new blender as part of my visa rewards programme.

Cooking skills/experiences: Involtini.

New ingredients: Lavender, kaffir lime leaves.

The best photo: Definitely not #162 - how blurry! Nothing stands out, but #164 only cos it's from a different angle.

Best savoury dish: The involtini.

Best sweet dish: French-Canadian toast.

Crunchy pork chops and an itty-bitty salad

2006-11-04T21:10:00.000+11:00

Recipe:
174. Crunchy pork chops with garlicky spinach and tomato salad

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I hope that by 'breadcrumbs', Nigella means breadcrumbs that came out of a packet and flavoured with italian spices, from memory. Because that's what I used. Unfortunately, I only had one tomato left in the fridge, so had to cut down on the salad quantity.

Preparation: Trim and beat pork chops. This was quite fun. Dip into egg mixture and then Parmesaned breadcrumbs.

Cooking process: Fry pork chops. In the meantime, deseed tomato and dice. Add garlic, oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper and spinach.

End result: This was delicious. The pork chops were crunchy (a little oily though), and it would have been nice if there was more salad to counter-balance the slab of meat. Oh well, next time.

Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: $10 for both of us.

Mess: There was a bit of mess created when frying, a few oil splatters here and there.

Special utensils: A meat basher.

Caesar salad

2006-11-04T20:58:00.000+11:00

Recipe:
173. Caesar salad

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation and cooking process: There are 3 steps to this. Firstly, cube potatoes and roast with garlic and olive oil. Yummy. Secondly, boil the eggs (I hard-boiled mine). Thirdly, prepare the salad with dressing. I do admit that I was tasting the potato croutons when they came out of the oven, and had to stop myself, to ensure that there would be enough for the salad...

End result: Served with baked chicken. I did however, forget to add the parmesan cheese at the end. The potatoes were so nice though - we enjoyed this so much.

Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: $5 for both of us (not including the chicken).

Mess: Not really. I used a non-stick tray for the potato croutons which meant they came off easily.

Special utensils: A non-stick tray helps. A citrus zester.

Baby burgers

2006-11-04T20:43:00.000+11:00

Also made a few weeks ago.

Recipe:
172. Baby burgers

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I didn't have garlic oil.

Preparation: Add salt and sugar to the mince. It is supposed to be left in the fridge for a couple hours at this stage, but typically, I am making this 10 minutes before we are looking to eat dinner.

Cooking process: Nigella does say to fry the burgers, but given the lamb meatballs and how hard it was to ensure that they were cooked through, I just put the patties into the oven to bake.

End result: Oops. I did forget to take a photo until I was halfway through the burger. It was okay, not fantastic though.

Repeatability: Nah.

Cost: $12 when I doubled the recipe, but I should have kept it as specified, as we didn't finish the rest.

Mess: It's messy to form the patties.

Special utensils: Nil.

Aromatic lamb meatballs

2006-11-04T20:33:00.000+11:00

I made this a few weeks ago.

Recipe:
171. Aromatic lamb meatballs

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: I couldn't find minced lamb at the supermarket, so bought the nicest lamb steaks I could find and minced my own. So, mince lamb, add spring onions and spices, semolina and egg. Mix together and put in fridge for half an hour. Then roll the mixture into balls.

Cooking process: In an oiled frypan, cook the meatballs, turning while cooking. I did find it difficult to ensure that they were cooked through.

End result: Served in a pita bread, with hummus, lettuce leaves, tomato, red onion and chilli sauce. Yum. We really enjoyed this.

Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: $12 for about 5 servings (including the pita and hummus).

Mess: It is messy making the balls themselves, and it is messy cooking them.

Special utensils: A food processor (if you can't find minced lamb).

On the road again...

2006-10-21T20:33:00.000+10:00

The Next Nigella will be away on a work trip in the US, and will be unable to post until November. I did have a few more recipes to write up, but unfortunately, I still have a bag to pack, a husband to pay attention to, and a bed that looks very inviting...

Thanks for visiting!

Ye gads...where have you been?

2006-10-21T15:29:00.000+10:00

The Next Nigella is aware that she appears to have gone awol...She has been cooking, but hasn't quite made it to blogging.

Recipe:
170. Banana buttermilk pancakes

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Ever since the cyclone in Queensland earlier this year, bananas have gone up to $15 per kilo, and they have been sorely lacking in the Next Nigella's diet. As it so happened, the Next Nigella was able to source one very precious, valuable and lonely banana.

Preparation: Melt butter. All other ingredients go into the blender. Don't you love these type of easy-mix pancakes?

Cooking process: Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter into the frying pan, which makes a whole bunch.

End result: Mine were served with mixed berry jam, Hubby had his plain. They are so light and fluffy! Absolutely delicious.

Repeatability: Yes, but only when bananas come back to a reasonable price.

Cost: Banana was free, rest of the ingredients were about $3 worth.

Mess: No, not really.

Special utensils: Blender

T-bone steak

2006-10-14T18:28:00.000+10:00

Recipe:
169. T-bone steak (the actual name is t-bone steak with potato wedges and onion rings. As you will see, a couple of those were missing...)

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: I slightly-melted the butter in the microwave, and then mixed the Worcestershire sauce and chopped parsley with it. This mixture is then put back into the fridge.

Cooking process: Cook steaks both sides. I know Nigella talks about wrapping each one in foil and letting it rest, but really I was too impatient, and just cooked them until they were how I thought I wanted them.

End result: Served with leftover coleslaw and potato salad from the night before (non-Nigella meal). While impressive, the salads were bought from the supermarket.
The meal was okay. The steak was fine with the flavoured butter, it was just that the t-bone was a pain to cut around. I know that I've said that I've enjoyed some steak meals, now I'm thinking that it's steak meals where the steak has already been cut up, rather than a whole chunk of meat in front of me. I'd prefer a better but smaller cut to this.

Repeatability: No.

Cost: I think two t-bones cost me just over $12, parsley was from the garden, so $13.

Mess: A few oil splatters when frying the steak, but nothing too major.

Special utensils: I don't have a griddle. I just used my frypan.

Involtini

2006-10-14T18:14:00.000+10:00

I've reduced the number of Nigella meals I've cooked this week. I've just felt like a change. Who ever chose 500 recipes in the beginning, anyway?

Recipe:
168. Involtini

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I halved this recipe so that it would serve two of us. With the oil used in the previous rabbit salad, I had run out of olive oil, so had to use sunflower. I also substituted sultanas for raisins, only because I had sultanas in the cupboard. And I have afro parsley growing in the garden, not flat leaf. The mint was also fresh from the garden, and not dried.

Preparation: Soak sultanas in water. Cut up eggplant lengthways into thin slices.

Cooking process: Brown eggplant slices on both sides. While the eggplant is cooling, prepare the stuffing ingredients, which is basically lots of different cheeses, pinenuts, sultanas, breadcrumbs, garlic, lemon zest, parsley, mint, and an egg to bind it together. The filling is then carefully wodged into the eggplant, which is then rolled up. Cover with tomato passata and mozzarella, and put in the oven for about 25 minutes.

End result: Served with a delicious salad. The involtini was so yummy, which surprised me. I enjoyed this meal a lot more than I thought I would. In fact, I am now going to make all three recipes...

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $11 for 3 servings.

Mess: If you ensure that the stuffing doesn't fall out of the ends of the rolled-up eggplant...

Special utensils: I don't have a griddle, I just used my frypan. My Micrograter.

Chicken in Mr McGregor's Salad

2006-10-06T19:54:00.000+10:00

When I found out that the chicken was supposed to be marinaded, I made the steak (low-fat) instead that night, while I prepared the chicken.

Recipe:
167. Peter Rabbit in Mr McGregor's Salad

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Substituted the rabbit with chicken instead. We don't like gamey food. I didn't have dry thyme but did have fresh in the garden.

Preparation: Marinade chicken, which I did while preparing dinner the night before.

Cooking process: Brown chicken pieces and put into oven for about 25 minutes. In the meantime, prepare salad and dressing.

End result: The chicken was so tender after being marinaded (so...marinading does work!) and I felt very healthy and virtuous eating the salad.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $15 for two servings.

Mess: A little when browning the chicken.

Special utensils: Nil.

"Oh, Next Nigella, are they love handles I'm seeing?"

2006-10-06T19:30:00.000+10:00

I know, I know. The Next Nigella is not as svelte as she once was. I blame this blog entirely.

Recipe:
166. Steak - from the low-fat chapter

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I wanted to buy my usual cut of steak which is the most expensive in the supermarket, but as Nigella specified rump, we bought rump to try.

Cooking process: Fry steak both sides, then sprinkle with salt and leave to rest. In the meantime, slice some tomatoes and sprinkle with salt and balsamic vinegar. I also washed some lettuce leaves. Slice steak, mix juices with soy sauce, then pour on top, sprinkle with coriander.

End result: So tasty, this was a light and pleasing meal. Oh - and Nigella's right - it does taste fantastic with mustard, although I only had Dijon mustard. Rump steak is okay, but I prefer the other cut, whatever it is.

I do admit that while I was preparing I was dubious that the amounts would feed both of us, so I put a chicken pie in the oven to warm up. I ate the pie myself afterwards. So much for the low-fat chapter.

Repeatability: Yes - but I do prefer the other cut of steak.

Cost: $9 for both of us. Coriander from the garden.

Mess: Not really, as I used all the juices in the meal.

Special utensils: Nil.

Fried rice

2006-10-06T19:19:00.000+10:00

Now, I know that you know that I know how to make fried rice, but for the sake of another recipe I thought I would give Nigella's a go.

Recipe:
165. Stir-fried rice

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I left out the prawns given Hubby's dislike of seafood. The chicken I scavenged from the St Tropez chicken (without the sauce, of course). I had no garlic oil, so just used olive oil.

Preparation: Well, first thing I had to do was put the rice into the rice cooker and start cooking. During this time I scavenged the chicken and chopped up the spring onion.

Cooking process: Cook spring onion then add beansprouts, add rice, chicken and corn. I tasted it at this stage and then added my own soy sauce and some stock powder. Then tip in the beaten egg and stir.

End result: Meh. It was edible.

I prefer my own version, which is to add more vegies such as capsicum, peas and mushrooms (whatever is in the fridge), and to cook the egg as a separate omelette which is then cut into pieces and added to the rice. I like to add soy sauce and stock powder. I like to serve with Japanese seven-spice pepper and a cut-up chilli.

Repeatability: Not Nigella's recipe

Cost: Not counting the chicken given that it was costed in #162, $4.

Mess: Depends whether your rice sticks to the wok or not.

Special utensils: Rice cooker and a wok.

Hot n sour soup

2006-10-06T19:05:00.000+10:00

I made this on Monday night. Let's start with a confession, I should say that there is one more serving in my fridge still. Yes, I am well overdue for a clean-up of the fridge.

Recipe:
164. Hot and sour soup

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Kaffir lime leaves were available from Safeway. I bought a stick of lemongrass, forgetting that I had a jar of ready-chopped lemongrass in the fridge. I substituted chicken thighs for the prawns, given Hubby's dislike of seafood.

Preparation: Chop up lime leaves, lemongrass, chillies, mushrooms, spring onion and squeeze lime. I wasn't sure whether to count a whole kaffir leaf as both double leaves or not.

Cooking process: Heat chicken stock and tom yam paste, add lime leaves, lemongrass, lime juice, fish sauce, chillies and sugar. I think I also added the chicken early to give it time to cook. Boil, add mushrooms, then spring onions.

End result: Sprinkle with coriander. This soup was so tasty, but it did make my nose run. Hubby really enjoyed it - I think he had two servings for dinner. And it was so quick to make too!

Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: $14 for about 5 servings. The coriander was picked from the garden.

Mess: Not for this dish.

Special utensils: Just a citrus reamer for the lime.

St Tropez chicken and potato gratin

2006-10-06T18:44:00.000+10:00

This was Sunday night's dinner.

Recipe:
162. St Tropez chicken
163. Creamy potato gratin

Source: The former from Feast, the latter from Nigella Bites.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: After a big day in the garden, I felt very lazy. I had semi-defrosted a whole chicken which is supposed to be jointed into 10 pieces, but after not even being able to saw off the drumsticks (they were left half-hanging on), I decided that we would have St Tropez roast chicken instead. Substituted white wine for the rose, and I wasn't quite sure about the mixed herbs with lavender - I used pre-mixed herbs, and then went out into the garden to pick a lavender stem (which I carefully washed. I only added one stem's worth given that I was quite dubious about adding this ingredient).

Preparation: Didn't bother marinading, but just chucked the chicken into the oven along with its marinade. It cooks for two hours. During this time, make the potatoes. I was too lazy to peel the potatoes, so we had creamy potato gratin with skin.

Cooking process: The sliced potatoes are put into a saucepan with a milk-cream mixture, and cooked until tender. The whole mixture (except onion) is then put into the oven so it can crisp up on top. When the chicken is ready, make gravy from the remaining marinade in the roasting tin.

End result: Served with peas. The St Tropez gravy was so tasty - I was surprised. I loved drowning my chicken in the sauce - it is sweet and herby. The potatoes were fine too - probably better if I had peeled them, but still tasty.

Repeatability: Yes to both

Cost: Around $10 for the chicken meal (I used an organic chicken and cask wine), and $7 for the potatoes (half-quantity).

Mess: I don't think the chicken was too bad, but the potato pans required some scrubbing.

Special utensils: Citrus reamer for the lemon, roasting tin for the chicken, another roasting tin for the potatoes, and a big oven that will fit both.

Chocolate pudding

2006-10-06T18:34:00.000+10:00

This was made one night when Hubby asked for dessert.

Recipe:
161. Sticky chocolate pudding

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: All ingredients were as specified.

Preparation: Chop chocolate roughly. Mix dry ingredients, and wet ones separately, then add together. Pour into bowl, sprinkle with cocoa and brown sugar.

Cooking process: Boil water, and pour over mixture. Put in oven for about 50 minutes.

End result: I found that unfortunately most of my sauce had disappeared leaving just sponge and the slightest sludge. We had a serving each and enjoyed it, but not sure how much we enjoyed it exactly given that the rest of the pudding was left untouched in the fridge for days (in fact, it's still in the fridge and is waiting to be chucked out). Also, we had run out of icecream which was a shame as it would have made a nice accompaniment.

Repeatability: Judging from the lack of further servings, I guess not.

Cost: $8.

Mess: Not really. Although I still have yet to clean the baking dish.

Special utensils: I used a shallow baking dish.

Rigatoni al forno

2006-10-02T20:22:00.000+10:00

After our holiday, we were craving pasta.

Recipe:
160. Rigatoni al forno

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: If you look at this recipe in the book, it "serves 16". As you may realise, we are a two-person household. I divided all ingredients by a third. None of the ingredients on the list were scary to me, I even had the right type of pasta in the cupboard.

Preparation: Chop up vegies in the food processor. I never bother peeling the carrots.

Cooking process: Cook vegies for about 10 minutes, add mince, add tomatoes (I used the whole 400g can and skipped the puree, didn't know what else to do with the leftover tomatoes), wine, bay leaf and water. I also added some stock and chilli flakes, which are not specified, but just to add more flavour. At that time, I read that the thing is supposed to cook for 2 hours!

Now, I know one of the things you love about me is that it exerts me to make a shopping list, let alone read all of my recipes in advance and make preparations! Given that it was about 6 or 7pm at that time and we wanted to eat dinner sometime that night, I decided that the thing would only cook for as long as I let it cook for.

So, keep heat up to maximum while you make the bechamel sauce. I used 00 flour given that I had it in the cupboard from previously. Cook pasta, drain, and then add both the sauces. By this time, the meat sauce had cooked for about 30 minutes - that was enough.

Add cheese and place the mixture into the oven for about 30 minutes. I'm not sure how I would have coped with the full quantity - my dish held the one-third mixture comfortably.

End result: It was a delicious pasta, very comforting and homey.

However, we did get a bit tired of pasta after having it for the next day's lunch and the day after's lunch...the rest got thrown out. And that was after I had reduced the recipe by a third!!

I will say that I also kept the tabasco sauce bottle close to hand.

Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: $15 for what I'm guessing would be about 8 servings? Not entirely sure as I chucked out a generous amount.

Mess: It does use a few pots and pans - it does take effort.

Special utensils: Food processor, Micro-graters, and a huge roasting dish that will take it all (and still fit in your oven).

An ode to Helga's sunflower, oats and honey bread

2006-10-02T20:08:00.000+10:00

...On second thoughts, I should be careful what I write, as if I wax too lyrically about it, I will go to the supermarket next time and find my favourite all sold out! (Never underestimate the power of your blog). So in the interests of ensuring my own provision, may I say that you should not buy it. Avoid it. And if decide not to listen to the Next Nigella and you do end up buying Helga's, please ensure that you leave one of the sunflower, honey and oats type for me...

Recipe:
159. French-canadian toast

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I couldn't find challah or brioche in the supermarket, no matter how hard I looked. Turkish bread, yes. Plastic bread, yes. Rye bread, yes. Pumpernickel, darn it, yes. But no challah or brioche? My favourite would have to do.

Preparation: I know Nigella suggests this for supper, but I made it for breakfast. Soak bread in egg mixture for 5 minutes, then turn over. While the bread was soaking, I started a load of laundry. I point that out as an out-of-the-ordinary event, not as a regular occurrence.

Cooking process: Crisp bacon, and while you are blotting bacon with paper towels, cook egg bread both sides.

End result: Served with maple syrup. Absolutely delicious - what a filling and satisfying breakfast.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $6 for 2 servings.

Mess: The pan needed a bit of soaking afterwards, but it was fine to clean up.

Special utensils: Nil. Make sure you have paper towels so you can blot the bacon. I didn't bother wrapping in foil - just work fast.

September 2006 assessment

2006-10-02T19:41:00.000+10:00

Darn it, didn't write up the rest of the September meals. Oh well, they get counted towards October.

Number of recipes made this month: 17

Assessment by book:

How to Eat - last month at 80, this month at 85 (5 recipes)
Domestic Goddess - last month at 9, this month at 10 (1 recipe)
Forever Summer - last month at 4, remaining at 4. While I am tempted by the recent blue skies, I am still saving this book for another month or two.
Feast - last month at 32, this month at 41 (9 recipes)
Nigella Bites - last month at 16, this month at 18 (2 recipes)

Size of repertoire: From 88 to 97 repeatable recipes. In fact, #147 has already been repeated several times since.

Cost: $88. Not cooking helps save money!

New toys: Nil. Can you believe our hotel was close to some kitchenware shops in Hong Kong, yet I showed little interest in even browsing? I must have been really sick!

Cooking skills/experiences: Biscuit decorating. Can you tell?

New ingredients: Black sapote. Puy lentils

The best photo: I like the cookies picture. #142.

Best savoury dish: Vietnamese coleslaw.

Best sweet dish: Buttered apples.

Ha, now I can write-up a head start on October. Unfortunately this will be another month for slim pickings, given planned work travels at the end of month.

Tomato couscous

2006-09-30T19:28:00.000+10:00

Recipe:
158. Tomato couscous

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: No garlic-infused oil, so just used regular extra-virgin olive oil.

Preparation: Halve tomatoes.

Cooking process: Cook tomatoes, add couscous and spices, boil water and leave for 5 minutes. That is too easy.

End result: I had made it for dinner to go with some leftover Thai chicken wraps (not regarded as Chinese food), but when we got to it, we found that the chicken wraps were sufficient, so all I managed to do was spoon out a bit for the photo display and then we had the couscous for lunch the next day.

I'm not sure if it was the sitting around, but when we ate it for lunch the next day, I found it to be quite bland, and added a lot of Tabasco sauce to mine.

Repeatability: No

Cost: I doubled the amounts to ensure that it would serve both of us. $4.

Mess: The saucepan just needed a soak to get all of the couscous off.

Special utensils: Nil.

Just call us chopstick masters

2006-09-30T18:40:00.000+10:00

So, we went away to China for 12 days. We visited Beijing, Xi'an, Suzhou, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

In terms of meals, from Beijing to Shanghai we travelled with Intrepid which had a group of 12 plus the tour leader. So most nights were group banquets.

Food highlights included the Mongolian hotpot and Peking duck. To my knowledge, I didn't eat dog, unless our tour leader ordered it secretly (he has a wicked sense of humour).

We were sick by the time we reached Hong Kong, so all those plans of yum-chaing over town went out the window. Okay, okay, I'll admit that we had Macca's (hangs head in shame). But we only did it once.

One thing that struck us was how cheap the meals were when eating out. The most expensive meal that we had was the Mongolian hotpot, which set us back Y130, or AUD$22 for both of us, including drinks, and Hubby had beer. Cheapest was a dumpling dinner, where we ate until we were stuffed, and paid Y54 or AUD$9 for both of us, including drinks, including Hubby's beer. Oh, and we did have a traditional breakfast for Y8 one day (AUD$1.30), just across from the hotel. We did enjoy eating out, but when we came home, Hubby said "No Asian food for a week, okay?"

Lentil soup

2006-09-30T18:25:00.000+10:00

The last of the pre-trip meals...

Recipe:
157. Lentil soup

Source: Feast. From the Funeral chapter. Not that we were having a funeral or anything, it's just that I had all of the ingredients on hand.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: This was made in half-quantities. Puy lentils were sourced from the Queen Vic market ($3 for 250g, if I remember rightly), substituted Dijon mustard for wholegrain mustard, and used up the last of the chopped tomatoes which were leftover from the pizza.

Preparation: All vegies are pleasingly chopped up with the food processor.

Cooking process: The vegies are then cooked until soft. Then add the lentils, mustard, tomatoes and water, and leave for an hour. From memory (and this is why you should not leave blogposts for when you come back from your holiday), I had to keep topping up with water, I also believe I added stock powder after tasting it.

End result: The soup was okay. Nothing exciting, and I would have preferred if the lentils had softened into the soup. I suppose the opposite reason is why Nigella specified Puy lentils, because they don't melt, but this was the first time I had tried them.

Repeatability: Nah...

Cost: $7 for a half-quantity. Not sure how many servings it had, as I believe I had to chuck the rest out, given that we were going on holidays.

Mess: Nothing too bad.

Special utensils: Food processor, I love it.

Mozzarella in carrozza

2006-09-29T18:16:00.000+10:00

This was also made before we left.

Recipe:
156. Mozzarella in carrozza

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: If I can remember rightly, I substituted the specified plastic white bread for Helga's sunflower, honey and oats bread. I still had mozzarella leftover from the pizza.

Preparation: Make a cheese sandwich, wodge the edges together and hope it stays. Dip the sandwich into milk, then flour, then beaten egg.

Cooking process: And quickly fry both sides. I had to do some careful maneuvering to make sure it didn't come apart - I guess Helga's bread doesn't stick together like plastic bread does.

End result: It was pleasingly crunchy, although bland, and I agree that next time it would be better served with chilli sauce.

Repeatability: As above, will serve with sauce next time.

Cost: $4 to serve two.

Mess: A little, depending on how far away your dunking bowls are from the frying pan.

Special utensils: Nil.

Sake steak

2006-09-29T17:46:00.000+10:00

I'm baaaaack! Did you miss me?

We came back a few days ago, and I've been banned from cooking Asian food for the next week, as we had an overdose while we were overseas. All the better for getting through some more Nigella recipes.

This meal was cooked before we went. (You'll also need to scroll below for black sapote, as I only just published it, but it published to the original drafting date).

Recipe:
155. Sake steak and rice

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I substituted Dijon mustard for the specified English mustard.

Preparation: Marinade steaks. Although normally I am not this prepared, I remember making the marinade the night before, and leaving the steaks to marinade all of the next day.

Cooking process: Rice-cooker rice, adding cardamom pods. Fry steaks for a couple minutes each side. I didn't bother foil wrapping them. Boil sake and make sauce. Then carve meat and lay on top of rice.

End result: Served with wok-fried bok choy, with an oyster and sesame oil sauce. Mmmmm. This was a lovely meal. I love my steak.

Repeatability: Yes, although I will need to buy more sake before I can make it again, as I used up the last of my bottle.

Cost: $12 for 3 servings.

Mess: Only when you cut up the steak, and the juices run everywhere.

Special utensils: A rice cooker makes things easy.

Tasting: Black sapote

2006-09-29T16:43:00.000+10:00

I went for a walk to the Queen Victoria market one Friday a few weeks ago with one of my workmates. And when you see something labelled 'Chocolate pudding fruit' for only $1, one has to try it, yes?

I chose a hard one, but the grocer told me it needed to be soft and squishy and starting to go black on the outside. So I swapped for one that was so squishy, it left an indent on the side when I squeezed.

So here's the assessment:
Smell: No distinguishable smell. I was hoping for a chocolate hit.
Cut: Given it is so soft when it is ripe, it is very easy to cut, and inside there are 4 or 5 pips about the size of an almond. And here is a photo of the inside:

Mouthfeel: Soft like mousse.
Taste: I can distinguish the tiniest amount of vanilla, which I enhanced with vanilla essence, yoghurt, and melted icecream.

I'll save you from the picture of the 'mousse', it looks like the inside of a baby's nappy.

Overall: It's not very exciting, I wouldn't buy it again.

Signing off for a little while...

2006-09-14T21:27:00.000+10:00

The Next Nigella is off on an overseas trip, so will be unable to blog for a little while. She has three meals that she has experienced, but has yet to write about; she has comments that she has not responded to (sorry people); and needs to urgently finish packing. Good intentions, but unfortunately time was against her - please check back here again at the end of September.

Bye bye for now, and thanks for visiting!

Lemon roast chicken with lazy mash

2006-09-11T19:58:00.000+10:00

This was last night's dinner.

Recipe:
152. Lemon roast chicken
153. Lazy mash
154. Petits pois a la francaise

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had run out of garlic oil, so used olive oil.

Preparation: Shove half a lemon into the chicken, and then massage the chicken with butter (which I had melted a little in the microwave) and then oil.

Cooking process: Put chicken in oven while you prick a few potatoes, which are then added to the oven. Then you have free time for an hour!

I then decided to use up my cauliflower cheese packet from the Good Food and Wine Show a few months ago, and prepared that. At the same time, I made the petits pois which was just spring onions, lettuce and potatoes braised in some stock. Then ding! the chicken was ready, so I made the gravy. My potatoes were also ready by that stage (in fact, their skins were getting very brown) and were ready to be turned into lazy mash. You need to be very careful - the potatoes are very hot. I used a fork and knife to get the potato out of the skin without burning myself.

End result: Another great meal. I must say that the chicken meals are very popular in our household. The chicken was perfect, although the gravy was a little oily. I might have added too much nutmeg to the mash, but it was fine. The peas were good, probably more effort than what I would normally do. I must also admit that the cauliflower cheese was amazing (even though it came out of a packet).

Repeatability: Yes to all, including the cauliflower cheese...

Cost: $11 and it would have served 4.

Mess: There did seem to be quite a few dishes in the sink at the end, but 10 minutes of scrubbing and back to a shiny sink!

Special utensils: Citrus reamer, and a non-stick roasting tin.

Aloo gobi

2006-09-10T16:31:00.000+10:00

This was Thursday night's dinner. I had bought some chicken breasts that were already marinaded in tandoori sauce, so thought that this dish would go well with the chicken.

Recipe:
151. Aloo gobi

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I only had ground cumin instead of cumin seeds, so used that.

Preparation: Peel and boil potatoes. Cut up spring onions and cauliflower. Measure out the spices so they are ready to go.

Cooking process: Waiting, waiting for the potatoes to boil. Cook the seeds, it didn't take very long until they started to pop. Then add spring onions and cauliflower, and leave for 10 minutes. Then add all other ingredients, cook for another 5 or so minutes, and voila!

End result: I didn't think it was too bad, you certainly notice the lemon juice in the meal, and it goes well with the chicken.

Unfortunately Mr Fussy didn't like it, and found it too bland.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $7. It makes a lot.

Mess: Nothing too bad.

Special utensils: A citrus reamer.

(Un)exceptional salmon

2006-09-10T16:20:00.000+10:00

This was Wednesday night's dinner. I suppose I've already given away in the title what we thought of this dish.

Recipe:
150. Exceptional salmon

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: Cube bacon, wash lettuce leaves (I used a mixed bag), and peel and slice tomatoes. I am now an expert in tomato-peeling.

Cooking process: Fry bacon, then cook salmon. This was a bit messy, as the oil was spluttering everywhere. Boil eggs. Yes, I added all recommendations to the salad. Then squeeze lemon juice into the frypan and pour on top.

End result:...Well, the bacon and eggs were nice.

Hubby was saying while it was cooking, "It smells very fishy!" and you will of course remember his dislike of seafood. He obediently tried some, but when he got to the raw inside of the salmon, he couldn't handle it. I've been banned from making seafood again.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $15 down the drain.

Mess: And the frypan splutters and there is oil everywhere and some of the salmon skin stuck to the frying pan...

Special utensils: A citrus reamer for the lemon juice.

Soup and patties

2006-09-10T16:04:00.000+10:00

This was Tuesday night's dinner. Given that I had ham, parsley sauce, and potatoes leftover from Monday night, what else could I make but...

Recipe:
148. Parsley and ham patties
149. Pea soup

Source: Both recipes are from How to Eat.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: This was a really quick dinner, which helped to make up for the night before.

Preparation: All done the night before...mash potatoes, cut up ham, cut up gherkin.

Cooking process: For the soup, heat some stock, cook some peas in the stock, and then puree in the food processor. Too easy. Grate some parmesan for the top.

For the patties, combine all ingredients, then form into patty shapes and fry in the frypan. I must admit that my patties didn't hold together very well, so I added an egg hoping that this would bind all ingredients together, but they still fell apart. Oh well, it would still taste the same.

End result: The soup was much much better than what I thought (considering what simple ingredients were put together). Earlier that day, I had been talking to a work colleague who asked, "What's for dinner?", and when I told him pea soup, he started going "Ewww. My mum used to make pea soup and it was disgusting." While I laughed it off, I did get a bit worried. But really, I had nothing to worry about. Here 'tis.

As for the patties, they did fall apart in the pan, so if you look at the photo, you probably won't be able to distinguish one patty from another, but it still tasted fine. There were some bits where I should have left it cooking a bit longer so that it could go brown and crunchy...mmmm. It was okay, very filling, but nothing special.

Repeatability: Yes to the pea soup, no to the patties.

Cost: Soup $2, patties $4.

Mess: The darn patties ALSO stuck to the pan, which required quite a bit of soaking to get off. I don't care even if they were nice, they are NOT a repeatable.

Special utensils: Food processor to puree the soup and a micro-grater for the cheese.

Toffee apple

2006-09-10T15:56:00.000+10:00

This was dessert on Monday night.

Recipe:
147. Buttered apples
Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had a lone red apple in the fruit bowl, so this was as close to a cox as I was going to get.

Preparation: Peel lone apple, and cut up into pieces.

Cooking process: Melt some butter and fry the apple. Then add some sugar, which turns into a delightful caramelly toffee, and hardens around the apple.

End result: This was better than what I thought it would be.

And the next night, Hubby asks hopefully, "Are there any more apples left?" (Er, that was a no, but glad that you enjoyed it!)

Repeatability: Yes - I've bought apples today especially to keep Hubby happy.

Cost: About $1 for two servings.

Mess: Not too much, but make sure you clean the pan immediately after cooking, and that way the toffee won't harden.

Special utensils: Nil.

Parsley sauce and a rabbit

2006-09-06T20:54:00.000+10:00

This was Monday night's dinner. And it was a lot more trouble than I expected.

Recipe:
145. Parsley sauce (variation of bechamel sauce)
146. Somerset rabbit. Ha. This is the closest that I'll get to eating a rabbit, thanks.

Source: Parsley sauce is from How to Eat, Somerset rabbit from Feast.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I hope that by cider, that Nigella means apple juice. Because that is what I used. Do you think that she meant an alcoholic cider, like Strongbow?

Preparation: My first step was to peel and boil some potatoes. Then I infused the parsley stalks in some milk. I chopped the parsley leaves, then grated the cheddar (with my micro-grater) and chopped up the ham.

Cooking process: I then made the bechamel sauce and added the parsley leaves, toasted the muffins, made the cheese mixture which was yet another bechamel sauce, and then grilled the cheese on muffins. While the cheese was grilling, I fried the ham, and tea was ready!

End result: Hmm, the somerset rabbit seemed a lot of trouble just for melted cheese on muffins. Nice, but wouldn't it be easier to toast the muffins, slice a piece of cheese, and spread with a bit of mustard? Or is that just lazy me talking? The parsley sauce wasn't anything special either.

Repeatability: No to both.

Cost: $4 for the muffins, $3 for the parsley sauce.

Mess: Yes, I used a lot of saucepans to make this dinner.

Special utensils: Micro-grater, toaster, grill.

Pizza!

2006-09-06T20:35:00.000+10:00

You probably don't want to hear this, but the raw onion in the coleslaw blogged below had some ah, unwanted after-effects - I was puffing like a choo-choo train the rest of the day. Or maybe it was the raw garlic.

Anyway, onto a cleaner topic. Sunday night's dinner.

Recipe:
144. Pizza casareccia

Source: Domestic Goddess

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had Italian 00 flour from previous! Yay! I could only find a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes, and I still have half of it leftover in the fridge, don't know what to do with it. I left off the anchovies. I was tempted by the ready-shaven mozzarella but in the end bought the block of mozzarella, after all, I have to put my micro-graters to good use, you know!

Preparation: As usual, I took the easy way out, which was to mix all of the dough ingredients in the breadmaker, and leave the breadmaker to it. While mixing, the breadmaker was making funny noises, I think the belt was coming off. Lucky for me, the breadmaker is still under warranty, but unlucky for me, I bought it from the city, so on one of these commutes I will need to lug a large breadmaker around with me. Maybe on a day when it's not raining. Chop up ham, gherkin, and grate cheese.

Cooking process: Roll out dough, add tomatoes and then put it into the oven for about 20 minutes. I tried tapping the dough when I took it out, I guess it made some sort of noise, I suppose it may have been a knock but not ultra-confident. Oh well. Add ham, gherkin and cheese, and put back into the oven for the cheese to melt. Hubby walks in and says, "Gherkin on a pizza????"

End result: The pizza was fantastic. The base was nice and crunchy, and the toppings were less than what I would normally put on (I'm a super supreme girl), but very tasty for all of its subtleness.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $5. Better than a deal from a fast-food franchise!

Mess: A bit. As you know, I always make a floury mess when rolling out dough.

Special utensils: Rolling pin, breadmaker, micro-grater

Vietnamese coleslaw

2006-09-03T17:50:00.000+10:00

We had this for lunch today.

Recipe:
143. Vietnamese chicken and mint salad

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I bought sunflower oil in the supermarket today, because from memory that's the oil I need to make mayonnaise with? At least I hope so. So I substituted that for the specified vegetable oil. The chicken was leftover from last night's roast chicken. Flukily, it weighed exactly 200g.

Preparation: Make dressing, which is a matter of cutting up a chilli and some onion, mincing garlic, and adding to sugar, vinegar, lime juice, fish sauce, oil and pepper. This is then left to infuse for 30 minutes. During this time I cut up the cabbage, mint and carrot by hand, and shredded the chicken. Mix all ingredients together.

Cooking process: No cooking required. That's it.

End result: This was so tasty. Absolutely delicious. I was expecting Hubby to complain about the hotness of the chilli, but even he enjoyed it. Yum.

And just as proof about how delicious it was, I'd estimate that it made 3 servings, we had 2 at lunch, and then in the afternoon we picked at and finished off the rest - it barely lasted 4 hours in our house.

Repeatability: YES.

Cost: If I count 1/2 of the chicken, $6 total cost. Mint came from our garden.

Mess: A bit, but I think that's because my bowl when mixing the salad and dressing was too small. I kept dropping bits onto the bench. However, I didn't want to use my larger metallic bowl, given the lime juice and vingegar in the dressing - didn't want it to react, you see.

Special utensils: I didn't use my food processor for this, given that I relaxedly cut up the vegies by hand. A citrus reamer to get the lime juice out. A garlic crusher.

Cookies!

2006-09-03T17:36:00.000+10:00

I made this last night while roasting a chicken for dinner.

Recipe:
142. Cut-out cookies

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I didn't want to use food colouring, so I bought hundreds and thousands instead. Did anyone else go to those birthday parties during their childhood, where the highlight was the fairy sandwiches?

Preparation: Mix wet, then separately mix dry ingredients, and add together. This then gets put into the fridge for an hour. I did find when mixing it that my mixture seemed to be quite dry - maybe my egg was not big enough? Nigella does suggest flour if the mixture is too wet, but doesn't mention what to do if it's the other way around. I thought, "oh well", and hoped the mixture would adhere well in the fridge.

Then it's a matter of bringing out the cookie cutters. This was lots of fun. I didn't even need to dip the cutter into flour - it didn't stick.

Cooking process: Pop into the oven for about 12 minutes or so - I found that my biscuits needed the longer time period to brown. All my biscuits fit onto one tray. Then let the biscuits cool on a wire rack, and decorate as you wish.

End result: I decorated mine with plain icing and hundreds and thousands. Ta-da! Because I am impatient, I didn't bother covering the whole biscuit with icing, but instead dabbed and trickled in a freeform way. I forgot that I had an icing bag too, so I just used a spoon. Still looks good, methinks.

As for the taste, it's quite a pleasant biscuit.

Repeatability: While fun to make and nice to eat, it's not amazing enough to warrant a repeatable. There's lots more cookie recipes to come.

Cost: About $3 for about 20 biscuits.

Mess: Yes, a bit, what with the dough-rolling and cookie-cutting and decorating. I'm still finding an occasional hundred and thousand on the floor.

Special utensils: Roller, cookie cutters, and a baking tray or two.

August 2006 assessment

2006-09-01T19:37:00.000+10:00

Number of recipes made this month: 31. Which is alright, but not as good as the blitzing July.

Assessment by book:

How to Eat - last month at 66, now at 80 (14 recipes this month)
Domestic Goddess - last month at 7, now at 9 (2 recipes this month)
Forever Summer - last month at 4, now still at 4
Feast - last month at 22, now at 32 (10 recipes this month)
Nigella Bites - last month at 11, now at 16 (5 recipes this month).

Size of repertoire: From 74 to 88 repeatable recipes. We were quite fussy this month (the successful recipes had a hit rate of <50%).

Cost: For 31 dishes, $285.

New toys: Nil this month, I behaved.

Cooking skills/experiences: Cooking lamb shanks, cooking with black beans (never again), and if I remember rightly, tagliata/carpaccio, which have been the highlight meals of the month.

New ingredients: Dried porcini, lamb shanks, black beans, almond essence, Italian 00 flour, saffron threads.

The best photo: Cambodian hot and sour beef salad

Best savoury dish: Tagliata with rosemary and garlic potatoes

Best sweet dish: As I hadn't made a huge number of sweet dishes, I have to choose the apple crumble by default.

I do admit that during August, I did go back and repeat a few of the repeatables, which I haven't counted again. Sadly, I already know that there will not be a high number of September recipes, due to planned travels.

Back to love...

2006-08-31T22:20:00.000+10:00

There's been a number of not-amazing meals lately. They've been edible sure, but not delicious, yum-inducing, drooling, can-I-have-more, meals. Which has been disappointing.

But now my faith has been regained.

Recipe:
141. Tagliata with rosemary and garlic potatoes

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: As I had stated, I had run out of garlic, so couldn't make the garlic-infused oil. So, it was served with rosemary potatoes.

Preparation: I marinaded the steak for about 30 minutes. While it was marinading, I diced the potatoes and chucked them into the oven.

Cooking process: Steak was fried both sides in a normal frypan. I don't have a griddle pan. Then I left it to cool a little - I didn't bother wrapping it in foil as Nigella suggests.

End result: Served with rocket and lemon (as specified), and avocado and baby tomatoes (my addition). Yuuummmmmmmmmmmmm. Love, love, love this meal. Check it out.

Repeatability: Yes please!

Cost: $10 for a nice cut of steak (serves 2), $14 all up. You must be mindful, that my quantities serves 2.

Mess: About the biggest mess is when you carve the steak, and all the juices run out onto the board...I guess Nigella would suggest pouring the juices on top, but I wouldn't.

Special utensils: A mortar and pestle to bruise the peppercorns, a frying pan, and preferably a non-stick roasting tray for the potatoes.

Clove-hot chilli con carne

2006-08-31T22:08:00.000+10:00

I made this on Friday night.

Recipe:
140. Clove-hot chilli con carne

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I'm starting to notice a tendency towards ease. I used a tin of borlotti beans rather than soaking. I substituted normal mushrooms for dried porcini, as I didn't feel like walking down to David Jones to get my porcini at lunchtime. Instead of the dried peperoncino, I just used dried chilli flakes.

Preparation: The vegies are put into the food processor. Love it.

Cooking process: The minced vegies are then cooked for about 10 minutes, then the other ingredients are gradually added. You then leave it to cook for about an hour, returning to stir it every now and again.

End result: I tasted it while cooking, and then added some more chilli pepper. It's a very sweet chilli con carne - I can see why it would be good for kids. Given that no kids are in this household, I upped the chilli levels for more adult tastes.

Served with rice, then the next day I bought some taco shells and we had it in those. I think it tasted better as tacos.

Repeatability: It's okay, but it's not an amazing chilli con carne. I like a more adult version.

Cost: $10 for about 6 servings.

Mess: Nothing too bad.

Special utensils: Food processor.

Roast lamb for one for two

2006-08-31T21:55:00.000+10:00

The Neglectful Next Nigella needs to quickly get her August write-ups in before the clock ticks to September. If memory serves correctly, I think I made this last Thursday.

Recipe:
139. Roast lamb for one

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I doubled this recipe for both of us. Given the potatoes from Tuesday night, we had used up all of the garlic in the house, so I left out the garlic (and substituted with garlic powder, sshh), and couldn't find redcurrant jelly.

Preparation: I know it was supposed to be marinaded overnight. Forgive me, but I didn't. It marinaded for about 2 minutes.

Cooking process: The lamb and marinade all gets put into the oven for about 1-1.5 hours. I also put some potatoes in there to keep the lamb shank company.

End result: It wasn't very nice. I don't know if it was the lack of marinade time or something else, but it put us off lamb shanks.

So now, adding to the list of prohibited items:

offal
quail
black beans
lamb shanks when cooked like this

Repeatability: No, thanks.

Cost: $8 for the lamb shanks themselves, rosemary from the garden, $10 all up.

Mess: Not really, mainly because I used a non-stick roasting tray.

Special utensils: A non-stick roasting tray. I am hoping that it doesn't have cancerous elements on the surface. I suppose I should also say that you need a lot of time. To marinade the lamb shank. Or at least some organisational skills so then you read the recipe beforehand, and not just when you are ready to make dinner.

Apple crumble

2006-08-26T12:42:00.000+10:00

Given that I didn't need to cook on Tuesday night, as it was just a matter of heating up the lamb, roasting a few carrots, and washing a handful of rocket, I decided to make apple crumble.

Recipe:
138. Plain apple crumble

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I didn't have light muscovado sugar, so just substituted with brown sugar. Orange juice I had plenty of, given the oranges that my work colleague had so kindly given me. I think I just used plain flour for the self-raising flour - I did have both, I actually have about 7 different flours in the cupboard, but thought why use self-raising flour if those properties are not needed.

Preparation: Peel, core and cut up apples. While I am doing this, Hubby decides that he is an apple crumble expert and says to cut them up smaller. Rub flour and butter together. Add sugar to make the crumble.

Cooking process: In a saucepan, melt butter, add sugar, orange juice and apple. I'm not sure whether this really added much to the process, other than tossing all those ingredients together. Then assemble crumble and put in the oven for about 25 minutes.

End result: It was so nice, I wasn't used to adding orange juice to the crumble filling, but will be sure to do so from now on. I really should make desserts more often.

Repeatability: While I did enjoy the apple and walnut crumble more, this is a good one to have when you don't have walnuts in the cupboard.

Cost: $4 for about 4 servings.

Mess: It's not really that bad.

Special utensils: Citrus reamer. I don't have a vegetable peeler yet, I just go with a paring knife.

Roast lamb

2006-08-26T11:31:00.000+10:00

I marinaded this on Sunday night, and we had it for Monday night's dinner.

Recipe:
136. Saffron roast lamb with sticky garlic potatoes
137. Sticky garlic potatoes
Is it a cop-out counting this as two recipes?

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Saffron threads, which I had bought from the Middle-Eastern store and carefully saved until now. I looked for redcurrant jelly at Safeway, but could only find cranberry sauce - unless I was looking in the wrong aisle. No, I didn't end up using cranberry sauce!

Preparation: Marinade lamb leg overnight.

Cooking process: As Hubby gets home earlier than I do, I got him to put the lamb and marinade into the oven. He guessed the temperature would be 220 degrees, and guessed rightly. When I got home, I started the potatoes, which were boiled for 30 minutes, then mushed up with garlic, then roasted. Then at the end you just make a saffron gravy in the same tray that the lamb was roasted in. I didn't bother straining, so if you look closely at the photo, you may be able to see a couple of strands of saffron.

End result: Oh, it was so nice. We especially enjoyed the crunchy potatoes - yum. As you can see, I got too lazy to make more vegies, so just washed a handful of rocket and that was it.

The roast lamb was nice too. We don't usually have a lot of red meat, but if it's this nice, we will.
Repeatability: Yes to both. Especially the potatoes.

Cost: From memory, the lamb leg cost $22; total cost of meal $30. Now, this lasted us for dinner on Monday night, Hubby's lunch on Tuesday (the remainder of the potatoes), again on Tuesday night (I roasted some carrots), and on Wednesday night, I used up the rest of the lamb in a fried rice.

Mess: Because my tray is non-stick, the mess isn't too bad to clean up.

Special utensils: Citrus reamer for the lemon juice, preferably a non-stick roasting tray, and I used my pestle to bash the potatoes and garlic mixture.

Almond and orange blossom cake

2006-08-26T11:15:00.000+10:00

I had this in the oven on Sunday, around the same time as the garlic for the hearthbreads. I remember hoping that the smell of the garlic wouldn't transfer too much to the cake.

Recipe:
135. Almond and orange blossom cake

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had bought almond essence a few weeks back, but hadn't used it yet. Oranges were given to me by someone at work, so it was an opportune time to try out this recipe. I also bought a packet of Italian 00 flour from Safeway - amazing what's now available!

Preparation: I greased my 23cm tin and lined it. Cream butter and sugar, add beaten eggs and flour, then add ground almonds, essence, orange zest and juice, and orange-flower water. I always feel good when I use one of the ingredients that we had bought from the Middle Eastern store, given that we went out of our way to purchase them.

Cooking process: Bake in the oven for about an hour. I put foil on top at about the 40 minute stage.

End result: I wrapped it up until the next morning, when I cut up 3 large slices. I found that the edges had burnt a little - maybe it was my tin? and that the cake again stuck to the paper. I can't remember if I greased it or not. I cut off the edges and the papery bits.

When I tried it, it was quite edible, but I found too almondy for me - the almond meal is fine, I think it's the almond essence that I found too strong? But Hubby and the cake connoisseur at work found it to be fine.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $8. It's because I bought some expensive and some cheap almond meal.

Mess: Not really.

Special utensils: 23cm springform tin, micrograter to zest the orange, and a citrus reamer.

Mughlai Chicken

2006-08-26T10:58:00.000+10:00

This was Sunday night's dinner. It was going to be a lamb leg, but when I looked at that recipe on Sunday evening, I found that the lamb leg needed to be marinaded for about 24 hours, so I marinaded the lamb, and then looked for something else I could cook.

Recipe:
134. Mughlai chicken

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: You'll be pleased to know that I've finally bought ready-ground coriander. I got tired of trying to crush the coriander seeds - it does make things so much easier. I had almond slithers rather than flakes, they'll do. I reduced all ingredients by about half.

Preparation: Make a spice paste in the food processor.

Cooking process: Brown the chicken thighs, and remove to a plate. Add whole spices, onion and spice paste; cook and then add the liquids. Put the chicken thighs back in, cover and cook for about 20 minutes or so. I made all this in my French Oven, just because I wanted to use it.

End result: The curry has a nice, mild flavour, although I found the chicken to be a little chewy (maybe because these weren't free-range?). I think I prefer more exciting and hot curries though. I also didn't much like the big bits of spices that I came across every now and again - I prefer it all blended in.

Repeatability: No. That makes it 5 in a row. What a fussy bugger I am.

Cost: $10 for about 3 servings.

Mess: It's not too bad.

Special utensils: Food processor, I used my French Oven but you don't need to.

Garlic and parsley bread

2006-08-26T10:42:00.000+10:00

This was Sunday's lunch, to serve with the pea soup encore.

Recipe:
133. Garlic and parsley hearthbreads

Source: How to be a Domestic Goddess

Weird ingredients and substitutes: No. It does use a hell of a lot of garlic though.

Preparation: I put the bread ingredients into the breadmaker and while this was kneading, put the foil-wrapped garlic bulbs into the oven. The dribbly garlic is then processed along with some parsley and oil.

Cooking process: Knead out dough, allow to rest (I didn't end up waiting for the 25 minutes, too impatient), and pour the garlic-parsley mixture over the top. I had HEAPS of the mixture, and probably put way too much on.

End result: One thing you will notice in the photo below is how much of the mixture I put on top. Then if you compare it to the picture in the book, you will notice how way over-the-top I went. It was strong.

The second thing you may notice is that the bread is sitting on top of greaseproof paper (which I had hoped was the same thing as baking parchment or Bake-O-Glide). Unfortunately I didn't grease the paper beforehand, and it stuck!
What this meant was that in the end I sliced off the bottom bit, which had paper stuck to it; and we didn't eat much of the top bit either, given how strong and pungent it was.

Repeatability: No. I'm sure it's very nice if you make it properly, but I still prefer other breads that I've made.

Cost: $5, and the breads were huge; it would have been 4 servings.

Mess: It wasn't too bad, given that you roll out the dough when it's on the trays.

Special utensils: Food processor is essential, a breadmaker makes the process easier, and two baking trays.

More soup

2006-08-26T10:23:00.000+10:00

This was Saturday night's dinner. When Hubby heard that I was making more soup, he said, "It won't be like last night's soup, will it?"

Recipe:
132. Yellow split pea and frankfurter soup

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Luckily for me, Safeway did have yellow split peas in stock. I also bought 5 frankfurters from Safeway's deli section, reducing the amount that Nigella recommends (8). I'm just not used to eating such processed food!

Preparation: The vegies get put into the food processor. I do love vegies when they are cut up this way.

Cooking process: Cook vegies, add mace, split peas, stock and bay leaves. Then cook for an hour. I did find that I had to add quite a bit more stock during the process, maybe another 750ml or so. Then add the cut-up frankfurters to the soup to heat up, and there you go!

End result: It was quite a tasty soup, and a huge improvement on the night before.
Repeatability: Tasty as it was, I don't think it's a repeatable. Very nice as a once-off, but not to add to the repertoire.

Cost: $6, and it lasted us for 5 servings.

Mess: It's not too bad, as it cooks in just the one pot.

Special utensils: Food processor and mortar and pestle (to grind up the mace, of which I only had blade mace).

Cornish pasties

2006-08-20T15:38:00.000+10:00

I made these for lunch yesterday.

Recipe:
131. Cornish pasties

Source: How to be a Domestic Goddess

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Instead of lard, I used some of my hard vegetable fat (just to use it up).

Preparation: Make pastry, which I made in the food processor. Put into fridge. Chop up onion, potato, swede, and dice steak.

Cooking process: Cook onion, potato, swede and steak for about 30 minutes. I was dancing to Robbie Williams during this time. Hope I am not losing blog readers by admitting this. Divide pastry into four pieces (as you will see in the photo, mine were not even...), roll out, add filling, and pinch edges together. Cook for about 30 minutes in the oven.

End result: Served with tomato sauce.

I'm not sure if vegetable fat is a good substitute for lard, as you can see my pastry looks a bit holey. As you can also see, one of the pasties was a mega-size (in fact, looking at the photo two of them seem pretty big), and it made Hubby and I laugh, talking about how the mega would be able to feed 16 people...

Repeatability: No. The pasty is okay, but it's not outstanding. The pastry is fine, the filling is fine, but neither of them make you shout out in amazement.

Cost: $9.

Mess: I always make a mess when making pastry.

Special utensils: Food processor and a rolling pin.

Black bean disaster

2006-08-20T11:35:00.000+10:00

After making the ham in coke (#93) last month, I had obediently frozen the stock for a future soup. Friday night was time for that soup.

Recipe:
130. South-beach black bean soup

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: During lunch on Friday, I ducked out to the Queen Victoria market to buy some black beans. I love the market.

Preparation: Defrost stock. I tasted the stock to make sure that it was up to expectations, and it was lovely.

Cooking process: Here is where everything went wrong. In the blurb preceding the actual recipe, Nigella says that the black beans need 10 minutes of vociferous boiling to take away the toxicity, right? I read that and interpreted that to mean that it only takes 10 minutes for the black beans to cook. Uh uh. So, after 15 minutes of "vociferous boiling" (just to make sure that all the toxins were destroyed), I put 3 ladles into the food processor, and found that it didn't process very well. In fact, all it seemed to do was remove the skins from the beans. "I mustn't have a very good processor," says I to myself. Now, things hadn't clicked by then (I'm a bit slow), so I continued with the soup, serving it out into bowls.

And here's what it looked like at that stage:
so I took one bite and the beans were still crunchy! So I returned the soup to the pan, and continued to cook...and 1 hour later, it was still cooking.

End result: We eventually got some, but ended up just drinking the soup and leaving the beans behind. Blergh.

Repeatability: No, and I'm even going to avoid any further recipes with black beans in them.

Cost: I think it cost me about $2 for 500g of black beans from the Queen Victoria market, and I'm not going to price the stock at anything since it was counted in the previous recipe. $4 all up.

Mess: Given that the rest of the soup was chucked out, the whole thing was a big mess.

Special utensils: A food processor and a big bin.

Advice: Avoid it!

Chicken with pesto

2006-08-20T11:24:00.000+10:00

I'm up to Thursday night's dinner.

Recipe:
129. Chicken with pesto

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil, but I had bought a jar of pesto the week before for pasta, and thought I'd better use the rest of it up.

Preparation: Mix pesto with butter, and smear over the chicken. I used chicken thighs for this.

Cooking process: At first I put the thighs into a frying pan, but then it was splattering and making a general mess, so then I transferred them to a tray and put them under the grill. Soooo much easier.

End result: This was quite nice, we enjoyed it, but found that 4 chicken thighs were not enough. Hubby was still hungry after this, so he ate the leftover soup from #128 as well.

Repeatability: Yes, but consider making more chicken thighs

Cost: As Safeway had run out of free-range chicken thighs, I had bought regular, which only cost me about $2 for 4 thighs. Total cost of meal about $5.

Mess: I found that using the frying pan method was very spluttery, and I even got a bit of pesto in my eye. There were a lot of oil splatters to clean up afterwards.

Advice: Use the griller in preference to the frying pan method.

That's Amore!

2006-08-18T18:37:00.000+10:00

This was Wednesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
128. Pasta e fagioli

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: My supermarket doesn't sell proper dried beans, so I bought a 420g can of borlotti beans. I suspect that most of the 420g would have been water weight, as you shall see in the picture. I did have muslin (leftover from #16, chickpea and pasta soup), so used that instead of a popsock (eww).

Preparation: Put the rosemary and onion into a nice little muslin bundle. Peel and bruise garlic cloves (I used my mortar and pestle).

Cooking process: Cover beans, garlic and muslin with water, and simmer. As my beans were canned, I only cooked them for about 20 minutes. Chuck out muslin bundle, and add a ladleful of beans to the food processor. Separately fry garlic and rosemary, add the pureed beans (and I pureed all of the garlic cloves too), then add back to the soup. Add and cook the pasta, then serve.

End result: This soup didn't excite me, it was fine, but it seemed a lot of effort for an okay soup. It doesn't look as thick as in the picture, I think it's because I only had a smidgen of beans after draining them (definitely not 420g), also I may have added too much water to the pan in the first place.

Repeatablity: No

Cost: $3 for 3 bowlfuls.

Mess: It seemed to be a lot of effort just for soup. Two pans, a food processor, and making a little muslin bundle?

Special utensils: A food processor, I used a mortar and pestle for the garlic, and a microplane for the garlic.

Home carpaccio

2006-08-18T18:23:00.000+10:00

I made this for Tuesday night's dinner, along with mushrooms on toast (#95, repeated).

Recipe:
127. Home carpaccio of beef

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: Coarsely grind your peppercorns. Dredge steak with pepper. Wash salad, add oil, salt and lemon juice. Grate parmesan.

Cooking process: Boil potatoes. Sear fillet on all sides. I didn't bother using the dunking in iced water trick that was suggested, but just let it cool as I got on with making the mushrooms. Slice fillet, and arrange on top of the potatoes which are on top of the rocket. I also added some cherry tomatoes, which for some reason I had chosen really well this week, as they were soooo full of flavour.

End result: A fantastically delicious meal. I should really change the title of this blog entry to "How to keep your Hubby happy".

Repeatability: A definite yes!

Cost: A nice cut of steak, $10. $12 for this dish (not including the mushroom dish). But, it only just makes enough for 2 hungry people, and the mushrooms on toast certainly made a nice supplement.

Mess: The frying pan needs to be soaked afterwards, and I found that I had little peppercorns over the place.

Special utensils: Mortar and pestle. I also used the medium micro-grater to shave the cheese - doesn't it look good?

Hmm...3 month anniversary

2006-08-18T18:20:00.000+10:00

I've just realised, that this project is 3 months old, and I am about 25% of the way through.

What I am NOT committing to, though, is a deadline. No promises means no pressure.

I am thinking that I will need to get more into the sweet stuff in order to complete the project.

Kitchen supper for 2

2006-08-18T18:07:00.000+10:00

This was Sunday night's dinner.

Recipe:
125. Aromatic lamb-shank stew
126. Couscous

Source: Nigella Bites (my fingers actually started typing "How" (as in How to Eat) as it is the default source)

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I wasn't sure if I would find lamb shanks in Safeway, but after wandering up and down the meat aisle a couple times, I finally spotted them. Two to a pack, around $7-8.

Preparation: Process onions and garlic in the food processor.

Cooking process: Brown lamb shanks, which I did in the French Oven. I then swapped to a bigger saucepan for the remainder of the cooking process, as my French Oven (beloved though it is) would not have been big enough for all 4 shanks. Fry onion-garlic, add spices and sauces, add shanks, add water, then cook for about 1-1.5 hours. Looking at it, I was afraid that the liquid would be too watery and there wouldn't be enough flavouring. Add the red lentils, and while these are cooking, make the couscous. Toast the nuts, add some to the couscous and some to the lamb.

End result: I didn't even get to see these photos before they were wiped, but I'm sure they were of the same mouth-watering blog-reader-drool-inducing standard that they usually are. Just use your imagination, folks. [Hey, I'm disappointed too. Damn computers.]

We enjoyed this meal. The lamb shanks were tender and flavoursome, the nuts added a nice touch to the couscous, and it was especially tasty with a lot of sauce drizzled over the top. Yum.

Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: 4 lamb shanks, $15, and reduced amount of couscous. $20 all up. It would have served four of us. As it was, Hubby ate one for lunch the next day, and there's one still in the fridge that needs to be chucked out. Should I really be confessing all this to you? You must be thinking, "Ew, gross. I always clean MY fridge."

Mess: You'll need a large pan that will fit all your lamb shanks. A food processor helps with the onion-garlic chopping. You don't need a couscoussier - I just plonked my couscous into boiling water.

Scallops and bacon

2006-08-18T17:56:00.000+10:00

I made this for Sunday's lunch.

Recipe:
124. Scallops and bacon

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Seasoned flour, which I hope means plain flour with salt and pepper.

Preparation: Cut bacon in half

Cooking process: Brown bacon, then flour scallops, and fry each side for a couple minutes. Then add sherry to the pan.

End result: Unfortunately we had to re-format my camera card, which means that we lost the photo. And it was a magnificent photo too - very National Geographic worthy. You will just have to believe me. I did see the photo when I was blogging last Sunday afternoon, and it truly was magnificent, but I was too lazy to blog that entry. I'm so sorry!

Anyway, for the food. I thought the meal was great, and would have been even better with toast (if only I had made bread earlier in the week). Unfortunately, Hubby didn't like it, because he doesn't like seafood.

Repeatability: If it was up to me, yes. But with both our votes, unfortunately, it doesn't pass.

Cost: It cost $3 for 10 scallops, which I had the fish-lady in Safeway count out for me. $6 all up.

Mess: It wasn't too bad. There was crunchy flour bits which were stuck to the pan afterwards, I just left it to soak, and it all came off when I eventually got around to washing it.

Special utensils: Frying pan. That's it.

Mushroom risotto - the other one

2006-08-13T17:04:00.000+10:00

This was last night's dinner. As you may have noticed, I didn't make a shopping list before I went shopping last week, which meant creative substitutes or recipe avoidance altogether. Lesson learned.

Recipe:
123. Mushroom risotto

Source: How to Eat. This is the one found in the Children's chapter, as opposed to the low-fat one.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had bought a packet of dried porcini about a month ago, and had been hoarding it ever since. I hadn't tried porcini before, so was interested in finding out what all the fuss was about. For the stock, I used chicken stock powder - like I could be fussed trying to search for porcini stock!

Preparation: Soak porcini in hot water for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, chop up shallot and normal mushrooms.

Cooking process: Cook as per a normal risotto, which means stir, stir, stir for 20 minutes as you keep adding ladlefuls of hot stock.

End result: Served with parmesan cheese (so easy to grate with a micro-grater) and parsley. I only had afro parsley instead of the flat-leaf.

The risotto was very nice, but I must admit that I was quite non-plussed with the porcini mushrooms - they didn't stand out to me in terms of flavour, for how much they cost and how much trouble they were. I wouldn't go out of my way to use them again.

I should also add a warning, where I think I had one bit which was a little gritty? Be careful if you do use the porcini-soaking liquid as part of the stock.

Repeatability: No, I don't see why this is so much more special than the low-fat one.

Cost: $5.50 for a 15g packet of porcini, bought from David Jones' Food Hall. $8 all up.

Mess: Not too bad

Special utensils: Micro-grater, for the cheese.

Chicken drumsticks

2006-08-13T16:52:00.000+10:00

This was Thursday night's dinner.

Recipe:
122. Marinated chicken drumsticks

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had run out of mustard, wholegrain or otherwise. I substituted buttermilk for the suggested creamed coconut dissolved in pineapple juice.

Preparation: Make marinade, one was honey, garlic, onion, and white wine. The other was peanut butter, soy and brown sugar, and the rest of the buttermilk. Marinade drumsticks.

Cooking process: Chuck drumsticks into oven, to which I later added the leftover roasted potatoes.

End result: It was quite ordinary. Even the marinade didn't add the required flavour and zing to the meal. Blergh.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $8 for the two of us, but Hubby's drumsticks (less a couple mouthfuls) went into the bin.

Mess: Not really

Special utensils: Nigella suggests a rack over a roasting tin, I substituted with a cake cooler over a cake pan base. Think MacGyver.

Buttermilk chicken

2006-08-12T19:40:00.000+10:00

This was Wednesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
121. The tenderest chicken

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Buttermilk is not something that I buy on a regular basis, does that make it weird? I substituted wholegrain mustard for Dijon mustard, as I usually do, and finished my wholegrain mustard off.

Preparation: Marinade chicken in buttermilk mixture, which I did that morning.

Cooking process: After getting home from work, I couldn't be bothered wiping the chicken dry, so just plonked the chicken into the tray into the oven, along with some potatoes.

End result: And this is the reason why you should wipe the chicken dry - the marinade crustifies. It still tasted good, but visual appeal was a little low.

Repeatability: Yes, and I guess next time I may even follow instructions...

Cost: $8, which covered about 4 free-range chicken thighs, and served two of us.

Mess: Not too bad.

Special utensils: I'd suggest a roasting tray for the chicken

Lamb for Tuesday

2006-08-10T21:24:00.000+10:00

This was Tuesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
120. Lamb with garlicky tahina

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Tahini, which I had bought a few months before in a healthy fit.

Preparation: Marinade lamb.

Cooking process: Brown lamb, then put into oven to cook. I put the lamb back into the marinade tray in the oven.

End result: Served with leftover rice from the curry, and leftover stir-fried vegetables from Sunday night. I did like the lamb, but didn't like the tahini sauce at all. Blergh.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $12, with about 8 noisettes.

Mess: The rest of the tahini went straight into the bin, if you call that a mess...

Special utensils: Micrograter.

Fish and pumpkin curry

2006-08-10T21:00:00.000+10:00

This was Monday night's dinner.

Recipe:
119. Thai yellow pumpkin and seafood curry

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I used a satchet of red curry paste, not sure how many tablespoons it was, but I didn't want half-used packets hanging around. I didn't use fish stock, I believe I used one of my chicken stock cubes. I had palm sugar in the cupboard, which I didn't bother grating, but just plonked in whole. I couldn't find lime leaves or lime in the Asian grocery store, so just left them out. As I had used the salmon the night before, I used rockling fish, rather than salmon and prawns.

Preparation: Chop up pumpkin and fish.

Cooking process: You cook the pumpkin in the curry sauce mixture first, and then add the fish, followed by the pak choi. The whole process doesn't take that long - maybe 30 minutes or so. As I didn't have any lime juice to squeeze into the curry, I added tamarind paste, tasted the curry and said "yum!", so then added even more tamarind paste.

End result: It's a very tasty curry. It's great. Filling, healthy, delicious.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $26, as 1kg of rockling cost about $20.

Mess: Not too bad, it's really one pan cooking

Special utensils: No

Old-fashioned chocky cake

2006-08-10T20:41:00.000+10:00

I made this on Sunday night.

Recipe:
118. Old-fashioned chocolate cake

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I left off the sugar flowers. Sour cream for a chocolate cake? Interesting.

Preparation: Mix the cake batter in the food processor. Easy, what's next?

Cooking process: I only had two 23cm cake tins, so I was ready for this to be a very flat cake. Bake in oven for about 25 minutes. Later on, I made the icing, which was quite thick.

End result: And here it is, in all of its chocolate glory:

It was okay, but I liked #57 much better. The icing was nice but very rich; one of my colleagues the next day mentioned the amount of chocolate in the icing, and I suggested that maybe it would have been better to just give him the block of chocolate instead.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $10. It feed about 7 of us at work the next morning, and then Hubby and myself for two days afterwards.

Mess: As you can see, I did make a bit of the mess with the icing, not only on the cake, but on the plate as well.

Special utensils: Food processor, spatula, 2 x 20cm tins (I used 2 x 23cm tins - my smallest set of tins), and a cake cooler.

Salmon and vegies

2006-08-10T20:24:00.000+10:00

This was Sunday night's dinner.

Recipe:
116. Sugar-spiced salmon with chinese hot mustard
117. Vegetables with ginger and garlic

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil. I was hoping to make the salmon dish out of Nigella Bites, but when I went to the garden, I found that most of my pak choi was at the end of its life, and had all gone to seed. I could only find a few edible leaves, which I added to the stir-fry.

Preparation: Cut up vegies, and mix up spices. This is a good way to use up various vegies in the fridge.

Cooking process: Dredge salmon in spices, and cook each side for a couple of minutes. Stir-fry vegies.

End result: I don't like fish as raw as Nigella does, so after I served up, I found that I had to return the salmon to the frying pan for a little bit longer.

It was okay. It did feel very healthy.

Repeatability: No.

Cost: The two salmon pieces cost about $12, total meal about $15.

Mess: I did have to soak the frying pan afterwards, but maybe that's cos my non-stick is getting a bit old.

Special utensils: A wok helps.

Rice and meatballs

2006-08-10T19:45:00.000+10:00

This was Saturday night's dinner.

Recipe:
115. Rice and meatballs

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nope.

Preparation: It's a bit of a process to make the meatballs. Mix the ingredients, roll the balls, and put them into the fridge.

Cooking process: In the meantime, get on with the sauce. Process onion and garlic, cook for about 10 minutes, add tomato paste, add water and seasonings. Cook for a little while longer, add meatballs, and then cook for longer again. I had the rice bubbling away in the rice cooker by this stage.

End result: The meatballs were very tasty, but I'm torn as to whether rice or pasta is best to serve it.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $8.

Mess: It is messy to make the little meatballs.

Special utensils: Food processor.

I am soooo behind in posting....

2006-08-10T19:21:00.000+10:00

I made this on Saturday morning.

Recipe:
114. Sweetcorn fritters

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Given that I couldn't find anything else I wanted to eat for breakfast, lucky that I had all of these ingredients in the cupboard.

Preparation: Separate eggs, whisk whites, then whisk yolks. Mix all together.

Cooking process: Cook each side of the little fritters for about 2 minutes.

End result: And this was my breakfast...

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $2.

Mess: Not really.

Special utensils: Whisk and a non-stick pan.

Beef salad

2006-08-05T08:46:00.000+10:00

This was last night's dinner.

Recipe:
113. Cambodian hot and sour beef salad

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I suppose I could have scavenged the garden for some mint, but it was too cold and too dark to go out there, so I left it out.

Preparation: Turn on griller.

Cooking process: Grill steak; while this was cooking, I made the sauce which consisted of lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, a shallot, and some green chilli. It tasted quite sharp. I cooked Hubby's steak for a little longer than mine.

End result: We both enjoyed this - it was tasty, the steak was tender, and it seemed quite healthy. But I must warn you, it was a very light meal for two. Dessert was essential afterwards (which kind of counteracted the healthiness of the main...).

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: I bought a very nice fillet of steak, it was $9 for two small pieces. $11 total.

Mess: Not really, you do have to be careful of the steak juices as you are cutting it.

Special utensils: A griller.

One-pan chicken

2006-08-04T20:24:00.000+10:00

This was Wednesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
112. One-pan chicken

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Because I could not think of a worse thing than de-jointing a chicken, I bought a tray of chicken thighs. Red capsicum was expensive this week! so I bought green.

Preparation: Cut up potatoes, onions and peppers. I did decrease quantities so that everything would fit into one tray. Add chicken and garlic cloves, drizzle oil, add salt.

Cooking process: Cook in the oven for about 45 minutes. I found that after 45 minutes, I needed to turn my thighs over to ensure they would cook on the other side.

End result: I forgot to sprinkle the parsley over. I couldn't even be bothered making a salad. The meal tasted okay, but we found the chicken to be greasy and oily - not sure if it was the cut or quality of meat, or the addition of olive oil. The vegetables were nice.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $10. This made quite a few servings (it filled up the whole pan), which we managed to eat for two meals, but the rest will be chucked away.

Special utensils: A large roasting tray or two.

No more mezze - please!

2006-08-04T20:11:00.000+10:00

After having the mezze for lunch on Sunday, dinner on Sunday night, portions taken to work on Monday, more portions on Monday night, and portions taken to work on Tuesday...it was time for a change. This was Tuesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
111. Chickenoodle soup

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I used chicken stock cubes (ssshh...).

Preparation: Chop up chilli and ginger (recommended by Nigella to make it into a grown-up meal), cut up baby corn, top and tail sugar-snap peas and beans.

Cooking process: I grilled the chicken (in preference to Nigella's recommended frying process), and I think therein lies my error. It made the chicken a little tough. Then the noodles and vegetables get added to the hot stock, and all gets boiled up until cooked. Quick and easy.

End result: Served with Japanese pepper, coriander, lime juice, chilli oil. As I said, I think the grilling process made the chicken a little too tough, but the soup, noodles and vegies were nice.

Repeatability: It is a repeatable, but I would cook the chicken as per recommendations next time.

Cost: Around $11, for 2 huge servings or 3 normal servings.

Mess: Not much

Special utensils: I used a grill, but I overcooked the chicken.

July 2006 assessment

2006-08-02T20:58:00.000+10:00

Number of recipes made this month: 54

Assessment by book:

How to Eat - Last month 38, now at 66 (28 recipes). It's still the favourite.
Domestic Goddess - Last month 2, now at 7 (5 recipes)
Forever Summer - Last month 3, now at 4 (1 recipe). Considering that it is the middle of winter currently, the fact that I have been able to make one thing out of this is fine.
Feast - Last month 8, now at 22 (14 recipes). I do like this book.
Nigella Bites - Last month 5, now at 11 (6 recipes)

Size of repertoire: From 38 to 74 repeatables. I've repeated the beef-noodle soup already.

Cost: For 54 dishes, $344.

New toys: Roasting pan, and 2 micro-graters.

Weird fruit: Seville oranges...

Cooking skills/experiences: Made pastry, made ice-cream (twice), made an embarrassing tart that shrunk, made a double-layer cake, cooked a sunny-side up egg, cooked a ham!

New ingredients: Seville oranges, dark muscovado sugar, fresh tarragon, treacle, mascarpone cheese, dashi, piri-piri sauce, pickled pork.

The dishes that stand out to me in reviewing the month are:

- Best photo - The potato and onion hash? But none of the photos were particularly National Geographic-worthy this month.

- Best savoury dish - This is hard. There were quite a lot of good savouries this month. The lahmacun?

- Best sweet dish - The completely delicious and lucious chocolate cake.

A mezze lunch

2006-07-30T20:01:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-30T19:49:00.000+10:00

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...

2006-07-30T19:21:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-30T19:12:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-30T19:02:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-27T21:35:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-27T21:23:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-25T20:27:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-24T21:30:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-24T21:21:00.000+10:00

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...

2006-07-24T20:59:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-23T21:57:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-23T21:44:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-21T20:42:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-21T20:32:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-20T20:40:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-20T20:16:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-20T19:53:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-20T19:37:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-15T22:55:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-15T17:16:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-15T16:52:00.000+10:00

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..."

2006-07-15T16:34:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-15T16:19:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-12T21:12:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-12T20:52:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-10T21:19:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-10T20:58:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-09T19:05:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-09T18:48:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-08T15:04:00.000+10:00

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...

2006-07-06T21:22:00.000+10:00

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

2006-07-03T20:21:00.000+10:00

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.

End result: It tasted like a citrus sorbet, but creamier. I made sure I only had a small spoonful after knowing how much double cream went into it!

Repeatability: No, it's fine as a one-off, but given how many different icecream recipes Nigella has, I'd prefer to keep on trying. I do have to admit this is a very easy icecream recipe - no custard-making and no churning after freezing.

Cost: $6 for the double cream, $3.50 for the 3 oranges. $10 in total, and it's about 1.7 litres worth.

Mess: I did have quite a few cream splatters to clean up afterwards, but if you were more careful than me, you may not have anything to clean up at all.

Special utensils: I used a hand-held mixer to whip the cream.

Chocolate cake, triumphant

2006-07-03T20:20:00.000+10:00

Day 4.5, and the chocolate cake was still deliciously moist. It's fantastic, and there's still two large slices in the freezer for those chocolate emergencies.