Eating their words

Serves: 2
Approx Cost: £6.30

As I said, I’ve picked out a few recipes already from this book for this week and this was one I was really looking forward to. I love potato cakes and I love sweet potato, what more could I ask for?!

The recipe was really smple to put together, after steaming the potato you leave it impantiently for an hour to lose its liquid then knock together a sauce while you’re waiting. So easy, yoghurt, coriander and a few other bits and bobs. After combing the potato with the patty ingredients you fry. My only worry with this was the amount of butter he suggests you fry them in. Jumpin’ Jehosaphat! I could have swam in it. I know things taste GREAT fried in butter but seriously, come on, you can’t fry everything you eat in beautiful beautiful butter for gods sake.

Next time i’ll be ‘lightly’ frying these little cakes in something a tad lower in fat. They were incredible however, lovely chunks of chilli and spring onion inside made for nice surprises. Generally I think I didnt fry for long enough (think I was feeling too guilty). If cooking again i’d make sure i’d squished them a little thinner and fried them a little longer. Just to make them more crispy. They went nicely with a crsip green salad.

Thumbs up!

Serves: 2
Approx Cost: £7.01

This is fast becoming my new favourite recipe book. It must be because it made me want to try cooking tofu. Tofu for gods sake! The recipe looked pretty delicious, although the ingredients seemed strangely out of whack. 8 fresh red chillis?!?! Are you trying to blow my head off? Jeepers!

Again I decided to halve the quantities, no need to make so much food this week, still got loads of leftovers to speak of. Managed to halve this one fairly easily, still seemed like an inordinate amount of some things, but they just ‘worked’.

It was a complete faff to start with, shallow frying the tofu took quite a while longer than I expeeted, and crushing the peppercorns was almost impossible, but I stuck with it. After the faff of prepping the tofu an peppercorns the rest of the recipe was pretty easy peasy. This wasnt so healthy though, lots of oil and a hell of a lot of butter (even when I reduced it) made me think maybe i’d made a mistake. But oh no, as you well know, everything cooked in butter is gods work.

The chillis gave it an edge, but not too much surprisingly, the addition of soy and a little sugar to the sauce made it gorgeously gloopy, like a liquor, an elixir if you will. It made the tofu, taste, GREAT! I didnt even know that was possible.

My only let down was the peppercorns, the damn blasted peppercorns. I just didn’t have the strength to bash every last one to a pulp and as such they stuck out like a spare thumb on your fork. Other than replacing those for crushed ones in future, and reducing the amount of butter this recipe is a winner. Certainly converted me to tofu, and James’s reaction? “the best thing you’ve cooked so far”.

There we have it, win win.

Serves: 4
Approx Cost: £11.57

My gent talked me into buying this book, “look”! he exclaimed in ASDA, “three ways to do aubergines!”. I relented, rolled my eyes and decided to give it a chance, it was on sale after all.

This week is probably going to focus a little too heavily on it, but i’m giving it a chance, getting my money’s worth! Partly because I was too lazy to get my other books from the front room while i was lay in bed doing my first-time Ocado shop.

The book claims to help with recipes to fill your family with good things, and I have to say most of the dishes seem pretty basic, using fresh, in-season ingredients. Simple and no fuss seems to be the basis and I started my adventures at page 151, Coconut fish curry.

It suggests a few different options for the fish element and I decided to plump for pollack as i’d never tried it before. It was very simple to knock together, frying off some of the base ingredients then simmering the coconut milk and tomatoes, finishing off with the fish and sugarsnap peas.

To accompany the curry, brown basmati rice, poppadoms and a very refreshing yoghurt I mixed together with fresh mint, cucumber and greek yoghurt. This made a very attractive completed meal, however it lacked spice. I’m not a curry lover and prefer creamy dishes usually, but even for me this lacked kick. Thinking about it now, could this be because the meals are for ‘the family’? I.e: for children who dont like spicy foods? Easily rectified by throwing more ginger and a chopped chilli into the mix.

The fish was really lovely, reminded me of River Cobbler, a fish without strong taste that takes on the flavours around it. Quite meaty and filling it seems and i’ll definitely be buying again.

However nice this curry turned out, its nowhere near the quality of the ones my chap makes and from now on, i’ll leave those to him, just don’t tell him I said so.

Serves: 4
Approx Cost: £5.96

As much as Hugh gets excited about chomping down on his vegetables EVERYDAY! after excitedly purchasing and leafing through, I myself, was rather underwhelmed. I’d been having spasms of guilt that about my excessive carnivorous nature of late and this happened to coincide with the release of Hugh’s new book (and new hairdo apparently).

After recieving the book I excitedly looked through and discovered it all looked a bit, well, like side dishes…to MEAT, glorious glorious MEAT! As such, I hadn’t come across anything I had wanted to try yet, always plumping for some fish and greens combo or juicy pork and roast veg, see Hugh, i’m still eating them! I managed a whole three weeks off meat (not fish) in November, and not once did I reach for this book. 

I couldn’t get hold of my internet shopping till tomorrow so had to work with what I had in, and that happened to be an excess of vegetables. “Right Hugh” I muttered. “I’M COMING FOR YOU!”. This sweet potato gratin popped off the page, I had every ingredient and all you had to do was bung it together and stick it in the oven.

The slicing was a bit of a pain, but Hugh tells me I don’t have to arrange them like dauphinoise so I relax a little. I combine the potato with double cream (i know i know, supposed to be watching the waistline), chilli, garlic, and some seasoning. The hero of the dish though was the whisked up middle layer of peanut butter, lime and olive oil.

Half the potatoes get layered, then you dollop the peanut butter mixture over, then top with the remaining potatoes. Stick it in the oven covered first, then uncovered to start crisping up. I gave it a little time under the grill to really get it crunchy but gave up too soon because I was so hungry. Could really have used a little more time. The smell from the oven was deliciously sweet and I couldn’t wait to start.

After delving in head first, my original thought still applied. This still didn’t feel like a main meal to me, it was too sweet to eat on its own. Hugh suggests a nice leafy salad, I agree, but maybe something peppery. Or, you could just have a smaller portion and have on the side of something else, oh, I don’t know, maybe some nice succulent roast pork?! The recipe declares it serves 4, however i’d go as far as to say serve this to 6 people, as a side, because everyone will love it in small doses, plus it was really inexpensive to produce.

Although the lime and chilli cut through the sweetness of the potato, it still isnt enough to balance the dish and I felt a tad queasy upon finishing my portion. The gent had his with curly kale later that night, which is what I should have done really, his review “its nice”, maybe I should get him to do a guest blog with that kind of insight? 

All in all, I’d probably bake this again, but probably only when i’ve got too many sweet potatoes left over and no-one fancies mash.

Serves: 8-10
Approx Cost: £22.00 
Music you should cook to: Fats Waller 

You have to read the title to the tune of Bamboleo by the way. Now i’m going to admit something, I dont actually *own* Jamies America. I’ve been craving this recipe for weeks and normally Mrs Petticoat (her wonderful food blog) cooks it for our group of friends and I get to take home whats left. I couldn’t wait any longer until our next meet so I snaffled the recipe from her and decided to make a pot myself.

There’s a warning that comes with this post. I’m going to say OH MY GOD alot. (OMG for short).

When I say pot, I mean vat, and when I say it serves 8-10 people, I mean it would probably feed the 5,000. OMG I barely had a cooking pot big enough! I had to brown the chicken and cooking chorizo in two different pots and then transfer to my main cooking cauldron later.

It was simple to knock together, and would definitely now be my weapon of choice for cooking for more than 4 people. There were a few moments when I thought this may not work, like when I put in 1.5 litres of chicken stock and thought, OMG this is going to be a stew! A stew of epic proportions! But stick with it, trust in the Oliver.

After a serious amount of cooking I lifted the lid to reveal the most wondrous of meals. porridge like consistency, smelling like the deep south, succulent prawns and shredded chicken with a little kick of chilli which didnt linger too long.

I’d been listening to my new Fats Waller record while cooking and i’d felt like somehow the spirit of blues had managed to migrate into my food. Had I channelled a Louisiana 60 year old african american woman with a hefty waistline to create this amazing meal? No i’d just followed the recipe properly and precisely…and was very patient. Good things come to those who wait my Granny used to say.

Overall this is an incredible one pot dish, another that I’ll cook again and again (sorry Mrs P). The photo below shows about 1/4 of the amount the recipe produced.

Only cook this is you’ve got a huge appetite or alot of mouths to feed, you’ve been warned.

Serves: 2
Approx Cost: £6.50

This was a really basic sunday dinner. I had two duck breasts which I had managed to snag from the reduced section in the supermarket and fancied a meat and veg kind of tea.

I didnt follow a recipe for this, however I did use a recipe for the broccoli side. I roasted up all the veg and after browning the skin of the duck I stuck that in the oven too. What I really enjoyed was the addition of the chilli tenderstem broccoli from Heston Bluthenthal’s at home book.

So simple, yet so effective. Chilli flakes and tenderstem broccoli on a really high heat tossed in a large frying pan with the lid on. Who knew what kind of difference it would make by keeping the lid on! I often throw chilli flakes on my veg but usually only when roasting.

I also roasted up the leftover raw onion and fennel in the orange sauce from the scallops at lunchtime. Absolutely delicious with the duck. The roasting calmed the licorice flavours and actually brought the sweetness out in the vegetables. Lovely!

So it seems that if some parts of the meal dont work in some places, then consider they may work in others…