Apricots In Manchester

Cookbook Challenge Part 3

It’s an interesting book to look through, with some unusual ingredients and combinations. There are lots of things I would like to try, but the son who chose the book also chose the recipes. He’s not a fan of aubergines or courgettes, ruling out a few things that I may try another time when I’m just cooking for my husband.

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He picked a pasta dish for the main course – with pecorino and pistachios. This is basically a pesto recipe, but with chopped pistachios to add a bit of texture and a slightly sweeter flavour. The dish includes mangetout so there is a fresh vegetable in addition to the pesto sauce and another different texture. Mangetout is usually one of the easiest possible vegetables to use, however in this case you need to finely slice them all into diagonal strips – not difficult but not exactly simple either!

I made a side dish with this: tomatoes with sumac onions. It’s not the right season, so it’s not possible to get a variety of juicy heritage tomatoes like the ones in the picture, but I was able to get some reasonably ripe ones which I left on the windowsill to get as tasty as possible. I just wanted something red to contrast with the green pesto and also wanted to use the sumac as it’s one of the key ingredients in the book.

Dessert was this honey and yoghurt cheesecake. When I bought my new Kenwood Chef I asked my sons what I should make and “cheesecake” was their first suggestion. It’s very easy to make the filling in the mixer and you can also crush the biscuits for the base in the food processor if you like, but I just bashed them with a rolling pin. That doesn’t make the crumbs as fine but is more fun.

The recipe said to strain the yoghurt in a clean tea towel. My pot said it was strained already, but I followed the instructions and more liquid did come out, leaving me with the quantity the recipe said I should have. It also left me with a tea towel covered in yoghurt. I think if I did this again, I would just tip the extra liquid out of the pot and avoid the mess.

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Here is the finished cheesecake. The white chocolate helps it to set, although it was still quite soft and very creamy. The green leaves are thyme, which goes in the base and in the honey drizzle. I’ve never tried using thyme in a sweet recipe before, but it worked well with the Greek yoghurt and honey and no-one complained about having leafy bits in their dessert. I served it with apricots poached with Cointreau and cinnamon. For some reason I always think dessert should involve fruit.

Everyone thought this cheesecake was lovely. It was so smooth and rich without being too sweet. It definitely needs the lemon zest; even though it’s just one teaspoon it makes a big difference.

I did enjoy making this, although it took me a bit longer than expected (too much slicing mangetout!). It was a lot simpler than last week’s complicated pie and not too much effort to make something quite impressive that went down well with the family.