Food and Cooking

Delia Smith’s Winter Collection.

Apricots in Manchester3 Comments

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.

Rick Stein: The Road to Mexico

Apricots in Manchester3 Comments

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…

Cook Book Challenge Introduction

Apricots in ManchesterLeave a comment
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!