One of the side-effects of getting a weekly vegbox is having to find different ways of using the vegetables that are in season if we don't want to eat the same things week after week. At the moment it's root vegetables and cabbages; this morning the vegetable rack contained a swede, five parsnips, four carrots, a red cabbage, half a white cabbage, four leeks and rather a lot of red onions, which didn't immediately strike me as a particularly inspiring prospect. My first thought was leek risotto, which is very nice but something we eat rather a lot. Or root vegetable and chorizo stew, ditto. Or leeks in cheese sauce, ditto ditto.
And then something made me have a look at the recipes on the Riverford website; I always think they sound nice but all too often we don't have the right combination of ingredients. This time, though, I realised that we did have everything we needed to make parsnip, leek and apple cakes (well, almost everything; I did have to substitute Cheddar for Parmesan) and decided to give that a try.
They turned out very well, I thought. The apple added enough moisture that the cakes didn't fall apart in the frying pan, as happens so often with recipes of this kind, and they tasted very nice. The egging and breadcrumbing was a bit fiddly and used all the bowls (admittedly we don't have a full set of bowls and one of the ones we do have was in the dishwasher), but not too fiddly for a weeknight dinner really, especially as the rest of it was a doddle. We had them with a kind of winter coleslaw: lightly cooked red cabbage mixed with grated carrot and dressed with lemon juice and walnut oil. And now the vegetable rack is a lot emptier and we're happily full of dinner. Definitely one I'd make again.
Monday 26 January 2009
Sunday 25 January 2009
Breast Isn't Best: Chicken with Coriander & Saffron Sauce
With the weekend approaching, I had no idea what I felt like eating or cooking, and thus no useful suggestion as to what Sadie should buy when she was at the market on Friday. Ordinarily this would mean falling back on something tried and tested, but the whole purpose of this exercise is to stop us doing just that; so in the absence of any firm idea, I proposed that she get some chicken breasts and I'd decide how to cook them nearer the time.
On reflection, chicken breasts were, of course, not the best choice. My plan was to get something which would give me plenty of flexibility, and chicken breast, being a somewhat bland base for a dish, even when the chicken comes from a proper butcher, seemed as if it would allow for lots of possibilities. The trouble is, it doesn't, really. Flicking through the books for a new recipe, I quickly realised that easily the most attractive prospects involved stuffing the breasts with something much more interesting (and for a number of reasons I wasn't going to suggest that one of us should head back into town to find a lobster), or making curry.
However, Friday evening's dinner was tandoori lamb chops, and while I'm not suggesting it's in some way wrong to have curry two nights in a row (after all, millions of people, mostly Asian, but also including me as a student, eat it every night of the week), I thought I should make an effort to step out of this comfort zone.
The alternative seemed to be to make an interesting sauce in which to braise the chicken, so I opted for Chicken with Coriander & Saffron Sauce, from Leith's Cookery Bible. It's a yogurt-based sauce with tomatoes (and, obviously, coriander and saffron) which came out very nicely, without being something that cried out to be remembered for a special occasion in the future. Still, worth trying because a) it tasted good, though it would be exaggerating to say it was a party in my mouth, b) it's something that uses ingredients we usually have at all times, so would be easily knocked up at short notice, and c) it acts as a reminder for next time that chicken breasts are rarely the best starting point for something new and interesting.
On reflection, chicken breasts were, of course, not the best choice. My plan was to get something which would give me plenty of flexibility, and chicken breast, being a somewhat bland base for a dish, even when the chicken comes from a proper butcher, seemed as if it would allow for lots of possibilities. The trouble is, it doesn't, really. Flicking through the books for a new recipe, I quickly realised that easily the most attractive prospects involved stuffing the breasts with something much more interesting (and for a number of reasons I wasn't going to suggest that one of us should head back into town to find a lobster), or making curry.
However, Friday evening's dinner was tandoori lamb chops, and while I'm not suggesting it's in some way wrong to have curry two nights in a row (after all, millions of people, mostly Asian, but also including me as a student, eat it every night of the week), I thought I should make an effort to step out of this comfort zone.
The alternative seemed to be to make an interesting sauce in which to braise the chicken, so I opted for Chicken with Coriander & Saffron Sauce, from Leith's Cookery Bible. It's a yogurt-based sauce with tomatoes (and, obviously, coriander and saffron) which came out very nicely, without being something that cried out to be remembered for a special occasion in the future. Still, worth trying because a) it tasted good, though it would be exaggerating to say it was a party in my mouth, b) it's something that uses ingredients we usually have at all times, so would be easily knocked up at short notice, and c) it acts as a reminder for next time that chicken breasts are rarely the best starting point for something new and interesting.
Thursday 22 January 2009
What counts as "cheating"?
Tim cooked a lovely stir-fry tonight (not from a recipe book, so not blogged), and noticed while assembling the ingredients that the bottle of soy sauce in our cupboard proudly proclaims itself to be "A Delia Cheat Ingredient!".
We were both a little puzzled by this, as we couldn't really think what soy sauce could be a cheat for. Are non-cheating cooks expected to ferment their own soya beans? (We did concede that she might use it in a "cheating" way in a recipe, although we couldn't think what that might be - perhaps someone with the book can enlighten us? It doesn't appear to be googlable. All we could think of was things like enhancing the flavour of sauces, which didn't seem particularly like "cheating".)
Although googling didn't produce an answer to the soy sauce question, it did turn up the full list of "cheat ingredients" on Delia's website, which strikes me as rather bizarre. Some of the items on the list are real "cheats"; frozen pastry, ready-cooked lentils, even the infamous frozen mashed potato that caused the press to suggest that Delia had lost it when How to Cheat at Cooking was released. None of these things are terribly difficult to make from scratch, but they do require greater or lesser amounts of time and skill, and I've resorted to plenty of them in my time and I'm sure I will again. But a lot of the others are like the soy sauce; balsamic vinegar, for instance. Green & Black's 85% cocoa solids chocolate. Vanilla extract. Maldon sea salt. These aren't "cheats", they're ingredients. I'm not quite sure what the point of this is. Is she just trying to persuade a reluctant nation to start cooking their own meals rather than buying takeaways by convincing them that they aren't really cooking? Does she think that proper cooks process their own cocoa beans and extract salt from the North Sea while on family beach holidays in Cromer? Has she just gone a bit mad?
We were both a little puzzled by this, as we couldn't really think what soy sauce could be a cheat for. Are non-cheating cooks expected to ferment their own soya beans? (We did concede that she might use it in a "cheating" way in a recipe, although we couldn't think what that might be - perhaps someone with the book can enlighten us? It doesn't appear to be googlable. All we could think of was things like enhancing the flavour of sauces, which didn't seem particularly like "cheating".)
Although googling didn't produce an answer to the soy sauce question, it did turn up the full list of "cheat ingredients" on Delia's website, which strikes me as rather bizarre. Some of the items on the list are real "cheats"; frozen pastry, ready-cooked lentils, even the infamous frozen mashed potato that caused the press to suggest that Delia had lost it when How to Cheat at Cooking was released. None of these things are terribly difficult to make from scratch, but they do require greater or lesser amounts of time and skill, and I've resorted to plenty of them in my time and I'm sure I will again. But a lot of the others are like the soy sauce; balsamic vinegar, for instance. Green & Black's 85% cocoa solids chocolate. Vanilla extract. Maldon sea salt. These aren't "cheats", they're ingredients. I'm not quite sure what the point of this is. Is she just trying to persuade a reluctant nation to start cooking their own meals rather than buying takeaways by convincing them that they aren't really cooking? Does she think that proper cooks process their own cocoa beans and extract salt from the North Sea while on family beach holidays in Cromer? Has she just gone a bit mad?
Saturday 17 January 2009
Hyderabadi Fish with a Sesame Sauce
We wanted a fish curry tonight, so I decided to try this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. We've had a lot of success with recipes from this book in the past; the lamb with potatoes (made with pumpkin instead of potatoes) is a great favourite, and I made the lamb bhuna a few weeks ago to great acclaim from Tim and our guest.
This recipe was less of a success, though. It's extremely labour-intensive; I halved the quantities, which meant we only had to grind 2oz of sesame seeds, and that took us three-quarters of an hour of passing the grinder between us. If I had been making the full recipe I think I might have given up in disgust and decided to make something else. And neither of us felt that the finished project justified the effort. Tim has less of a tolerance for spicy foods than I do and definitely thought it was too hot. I thought it was OK but the flavours lacked depth and subtlety, probably unsurprisingly given that the sauce was cooked very quickly and then the fish was only simmered in it for about quarter of an hour.
Not one I'll be making again, I think.
This recipe was less of a success, though. It's extremely labour-intensive; I halved the quantities, which meant we only had to grind 2oz of sesame seeds, and that took us three-quarters of an hour of passing the grinder between us. If I had been making the full recipe I think I might have given up in disgust and decided to make something else. And neither of us felt that the finished project justified the effort. Tim has less of a tolerance for spicy foods than I do and definitely thought it was too hot. I thought it was OK but the flavours lacked depth and subtlety, probably unsurprisingly given that the sauce was cooked very quickly and then the fish was only simmered in it for about quarter of an hour.
Not one I'll be making again, I think.
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