March 2019 – Page 3 – Apricots In Manchester

This is the first book I chose for my challenge. It was a Christmas present from my husband to remind me of our California road trip in August 2017. It’s full of beautiful colourful photos and is lovely to look at, however I wanted to actually cook from it!

For the main course I chose a monkfish, mussel and prawn stew with sourdough. My husband is a big fan of any kind of fish stew, so this was to say thank you for the book.

I wanted to try and follow the recipes as closely as possible rather than changing ingredients as I usually do. This week I was able to get some fresh monkfish. I couldn’t get prawns with shells on, mine were peeled so I missed out the first step which was to boil the heads and shells in fish stock. The book also includes a recipe to make fish stock, but that was a step too far in terms of ingredients and time so I used a Knorr stock cube. Not sure the author would approve but it tasted good to me.

I was able to get some San Fancisco style sourdough bread to go with it though.

Here’s the seafood cooking in the stew. Not very clear as it was a bit steamy. It was easy to make, although I had to re-make the red wine vinegar and sugar reduction. I thought it would take ages to reduce but it didn’t, so when I turned my back on it I had vinegar toffee! It was worth doing though and definitely gave a more rounded flavour to the tomato and garlic base.

Here is the finished dish. I am not much of a food photographer, but maybe I’ll improve with practice.

It was delicious, really full of flavour. My husband loved it and my teenage sons enjoyed it too, even though they are not really fans of anything soupy and the younger one hates peppers and celery, although he didn’t seem to notice them in this. The teaspoon of chilli flakes gave a nice hint of spice without being too strong.

Here’s the wine I added to the dish and served with it. I wanted something Californian and this was fruity and less dry than I would normally choose to go with seafood, but it paired really well with the tomato and spice in this.

Dessert was a Clementine, Almond and Olive Oil Cake, which I chose as it’s early enough in the year that citrus fruits are still good. It’s a flourless cake with lemon syrup drizzled over at the end.

This made a really moist, dense cake which was not too sweet because of the slight bitterness from the whole pureed clementines and acidity from the lemon syrup. Served here with fat free fromage frais and mandarins (from a tin, but I love them). Everyone thought this was a great cake and the boys demolished two slices in a few seconds.

Overall this meal was a great success and I would make both of these again. Not yet though because I have to go on to the next book, now I have to decide which one…

Just a small selection of my books

I don’t like New Year’s resolutions; to me January is a time to be kind to yourself and get through the rest of winter, not a time to set any difficult tasks. I did however start this year with a vague idea that I’m going to try more new things. I did try some too, maybe I will write about them another time.

Now as it’s very nearly Spring I decided to try a bigger challenge. I have been wanting to cook more for a while. I’ve always enjoyed it since I love food and even work in the industry, but during the week my husband does all the meals. He is home earlier and is also better at getting something on the table quickly, while I like to potter about and experiment. I have lots of recipe book; some new, some old and some a bit unusual, including some historical ones since that’s another interest of mine. However, I only actually cook from a few of them.

My maternal Grandma was a great cook. She died in December 2017 at the age of 95 and one of the memories read out at her funeral was about her amazing lemon meringue pie. Well, a couple of weeks ago my Mum gave me a small share of the inheritance she received and the first thing I bought was a shiny new Kenwood Chef. My Grandma always had one and she bought one for my Mum many years ago, so now she has kind of given me one as well.

Grandma also had a great collection of recipe books, some of which she passed on to me during her life. So my challenge is to open some of the books that have gathered dust for years and cook something from every book I own. I’m going to aim for a main course and a dessert from each one and try and cover one book each week. That may be too much of a challenge, but I’ll see how I get on!