Month: March 2019

Ottolenghi: Simple

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Cookbook Challenge Part 3

This week the book was chosen for me, as explained in my previous post https://bexknits.wordpress.com/2019/03/13/a-new-book-for-the-challenge/

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.

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!

It was really good – plenty of sharp pecorino cheese, fresh mangetout and lemon zest and the crunchy nuts. I couldn’t get dried trofie pasta, so this is gemelli.

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.

The sumac onions were delicious and really were simple and easy. I would make those again to put on other salads.

I like the red and green together on the plate. Both recipes contained basil and nuts, but the flavours were very different and a good contrast. My family loved this, including the salad.

Here’s the wine we drank with it. I wanted something Italian and I had read that Grillo should go well with pesto. It had a slight mineral taste which worked well.

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.

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.

A New Book for the Challenge

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This week the choice of book has been made for me. My youngest son had accumulated quite a few book tokens (he is not the most prolific reader), so when he went shopping with his friends last Saturday we suggested he take them with him. That way at least he got to do some shopping without spending all the money he is trying to save for school trips. He did buy himself a book to read, but he also decided that I could do with another one for my challenge!

I was impressed by his choice, it’s a really nice book and uses some interesting ingredients. As he was so thoughtful, I had better make use of it straight away. I did say I wanted to make something more simple this time…

Follow along to see what I choose to make – I’m still browsing.

Delia Smith’s Winter Collection.

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Cook Book Challenge Part 2

This is the book I chose to cook a meal from this week, mainly because I thought I should get it out of the way while it’s still winter (and it has been winter here this weekend, with hail and sleet showers).

The book was published in 1995 and accompanied a BBC TV series. Several of the recipes used fresh cranberries, resulting in a national cranberry shortage!

For the main course this week I chose a salmon coulibiac, which is basically a fancy fish pie stuffed with salmon, egg, basmati rice and mushrooms. It has a lattice top which is cut using a roller like the one in the picture. I have made this before, for a 1999 New Year’s Eve celebration, but that’s long enough ago for me to have forgotten what it tasted like. Also it’s British Pie Week, so it seemed like a good choice.

The recipe was not difficult, but it is long and involves a lot of steps: boil the eggs, skin and cook the salmon, cook the rice, fry the onion and mushrooms. In between all that you need to zest and juice a lemon, chop lots of herbs and then let everything cool before you even start assembling the pie. You can also tell this is quite an old recipe from the amount of butter used and because you are told to add seasoning at just about every step. I used a bit less of both butter and salt.

This week I had a friend to visit, so I made the pie in advance and put it in the fridge ready to bake when she arrived.

Here is the finished pie. The lattice is not as even as I would have liked, but the pastry turned out nice and crisp and at least the filling didn’t burst out.

Here’s a close up of the pie with the filling showing and on the plate. We just had this with salad with a jug of lemon juice and melted butter to pour on. The wine was a Pinot Grigio, which was acidic enough to go with the buttery dish. Everyone enjoyed this and my sons did not even complain about the mushrooms. It was very filling and rich so it definitely needed the lemon and fresh herbs which gave it a much fresher flavour.

Dessert was a lime and mango ice cream. You don’t need an ice cream maker for this, you just take it out of the freezer every couple of hours and beat it with an electric hand whisk. It’s a good thing I remembered to start this in the morning, because it takes at least 8 hours for the freezing part, plus you need to peel and chop 3 mangoes and juice 4 limes before you start.

We ended up eating this quite late while I waited for it to freeze hard, so it would be better to make it the day before you actually wanted to eat it. It was very good, like a cross between a sorbet and an ice cream and the lime juice made it sharp and refreshing after the pie.

The recipes were very clear and easy to follow and my family thought the end results were impressive. It was time consuming, taking up most of the day, so I would only do this again for a special occasion. I’ll be looking for something more simple to do next week.

It’s always rewarding to see people enjoying something you’ve spent time making; that was one of the reasons I started this challenge. As an added bonus, here are the lovely flowers my friend brought me in return for feeding her.

Apricot Blossom

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We planted this tree four years ago and last week in the glorious sunny weather the buds started to open. I took the picture on Saturday when it was cold, grey and damp. Not a pollinator in sight, so I don’t think I’m going to be making apricot jam this year.

Last year there were just a few flowers, progressing to six tiny green fruits which promptly dropped off. I still live in hope of apricots in Manchester.