The Turkish GP – Improvising in a very small kitchen!

Well, first things first, I have moved to France/Geneva, hence my not writing anything for a while!  Unfortunately I am living in temporary accommodation for the next month and a half and, although the place I’m staying in is nice, the kitchen is tiny!

The kitchen in my temporary accomodation

The sum of my cooking equipment is two hot plates, a microwave, a frying pan and two saucepans.  This means that I am somewhat limited in the dishes I can currently make.  So far we’ve had some pasta, some steak haché with salad and some sausages with crushed potatoes (no masher!).  It’s tough to make terribly adventurous.

But despite this, a while ago when I was deciding what to cook for each of the Grand Prix’s I had the idea of making künefe, an unusual Turkish dessert of cheese inside a sandwich of pastry, which is then covered in sugary syrup and served warm so that the cheese is stringy.  I first tried this about 6 months ago in a Turkish restaurant in London and was fascinated by the mixture of sweet and savoury as it was unlike any dessert I had tasted before.

To my dismay, all the recipes I found online required an oven (something I currently don’t have!).  Doing a bit more research I found that it is possible to cook this in a pan so despite being rather nervous I decided to give it a go anyway.

Cooking equipment aside, my other challenge was ingredients.  Neither the thin shredded filo or the recommended filling of unsalted feta cheese were readily available in the local supermarket.  Instead I opted for alternatives of sheets of filo pastry and some mozzarella.  There aren’t many ingredients for this dish, the only other things I needed were some sugar, a little oil and some butter.

The ingredients

To start things off I made my imitation of the traditional shredded filo.  The filo sheets (feuilles de brick) were quite different to the ones I had seen in Britain.  They came as circular sheets attached to a type of waxed paper and had a slightly bubbly and rubbery texture that reminded me more of rice paper than filo pastry.

My French Filo Pastry

After I had separated out 12 sheets of pastry I then stacked them one on top of the other and proceeded to cut them into ribbons using scissors (my sharp knife wouldn’t cut through!).  Then  I placed the ribbons in a bowl and mixed about a tablespoon of oil through so that they were well coated.

The filo shredded and oiled

It was then time to assemble the künefe.  I spread a layer of butter on the bottom of my frying pan before placing in some of the filo in the middle and building my nest.  I also started to lay lengths of the filo from the middle over the edge off the pan to fold over later.

Assembling the bottom layer

Next in was the cheese.  I used three balls of mozzarella which I tore into rather uneven pieces and spread around on top of the filo.

Adding the cheese

To finish constructing the dish I added more shredded filo on top of the cheese and folded over the side pieces to create an approximation of a parcel.  The künefe was ready to cook!  I turned the hot plate onto high and placed a  pan lid atop the sauce pan, which I held down with a bag of sugar and a  bottle of grenadine to press everything together.

PRessing the kunefe down

I cooked the künefe for about 7-8 minutes until I could see that the cheese was starting to melt and that the filo towards the sides was getting crispy.  It was time for the delicate bit, turning the lot over to cook the other side.  To do this I removed the weights and took hold of the lid before inverting the pan, which left the künefe upside down on the saucepan lid.  At this point, having only two hands, one of which was holding the lid, I needed some help from my partner.  He greased the frying pan again (and took a photo of me holding the lid) so that I could return the künefe to the pan the other way up.

Turning over the kunefe

I then cooked the other side for another 7-8 minutes before transferring the künefe to a plate.  The final step to finish this dish involved covering everything in a sugar syrup.  I made my syrup by heating  approx 100ml of water with a heaped tablespoon of sugar (there are no measuring jugs etc in the kitchen!) until the sugar had dissolved.  This should then have been poured over the whole künefe while it’s still warm, but since the künefe was bigger than the plate I spooned it onto individual portions instead.  The sugar syrup absorbs into the dish giving it a fairly subtle but still noticeable sweetness.

The finished kunefe and sugar syrup

A slice of kunefe

I had a lot of reservations about making this dish given my lack of recipe (the internet had broken when I came to cook it) and cooking equipment, but I’m really please with how my improvised version turned out.  It tasted pretty similar to the version I had in the restaurant and my partner and I devoured the whole lot through the course of the afternoon.  If I was to make this again I think I would try to cook the pastry a little longer to get it to colour a little more, however it was cooked through and had a great crisp texture (I had to cut it with scissors to portion it).  I think I might also experiment with adding some extra flavours such as lemon or rose water to the syrup.

The race itself had Vettel leading easily start to finish to claim his third win of the season.  There was plenty of action going on behind him with the two McLarens battling each other and everyone else squabbling for places.  Kobayashi has a great race finishing in the points after starting 23^rd and Buemi did well to finish 8^th which should help him secure his place at Toro Rosso.

This was my first time watching the French coverage, and although I was impressed in the build up to see how many of the drivers spoke French, the coverage itself left a lot to be desired.  There were very long advert breaks in which 3 or 4 laps of racing would be missed.  The first break was particularly badly timed missing the first round of pit stops and returning to the action to reveal and end of a replay of two cars racing in the pit lane (I still don’t know who that was!).  I have sorely missed my BBC coverage and will have to see if there is a way I can watch it over here!

Cheese and Leek Soufflé

This year I’ve decided to have a go at making things I’ve never done before.   After my success with my first ever homemade stock I thought I’d be really brave (or overambitious!) and have a go at a soufflé.  I’d picked up a free magazine when I popped into Waitrose one day (buying lovely cupcakes) and in this I found what sounded like a great beginner’s recipe for a cheese and leek soufflé.  The recipe was a Delia one (find it here) so I knew it was reliable, but it also involved the addition of grated potato to give it more body, and I hoped, great stability!

Things started off simply enough with 50g of sliced leek being gently cooked in some butter.  I used some goat’s butter that I had bought on a whim wondering if it tasted any different.  It doesn’t as far as I can tell and it works in cooking just as well as any other butter.  While the leeks were cooking down, I separated my four eggs and put a potato (approx 100g) onto boil.  Unfortunately one of my yokes broke and a little got into the egg white. I did my best to get it all out.

Frying the leeks and adding sour cream

With the leeks now nice and soft I added 150ml of sour cream to them. Leaving this on a low heat for another 5 minutes, I turned back to whisking my egg whites.    I got out my trusty £5 electric whisk (there is not enough time in the evening to whip egg whites or cream by hand, dinner would never get made!) and began whisking them up to stiff peaks.  I was relieved when the whites frothed easily and I had a mass of bubbly egg white in no time.  Then I retrieved my potato from the boiling water. That was put straight into the freezer to cool down so I could grate it.

By the time my peaks were stiff, the leeks and sour cream were ready. I removed them from the heat to let them cool a little, before stirring in the egg yolks followed by most of the cheese (about 45g). After that, I added the grated boiled potato.

Adding egg yolks

Next up was the slightly tricky bit, folding in my lovely egg whites.  I tried to do this slowly and gently to avoid breaking down the bubbles.  I really should have used a bigger saucepan. There wasn’t much room left to fold and mix in by the time I added most of the egg white!

With everything mixed in I spooned the mixture into my ramekins.  I don’t own one large soufflé dish as is suggested in the recipe, so I used two small ramekins and two large ones!  I then sprinkled the tops with the remaining grated cheddar and added some grated parmesan.  The soufflés went into a 200°C oven for about 15 minutes while I waited nervously to see if they would rise and made a simple salad to accompany them.

Ready to go in oven

The soufflés did rise! Not much (nowhere as much as the picture on the recipe L) but they were definitely bigger than when they went in.  Whipping them out of the over I tried to take a picture as quickly as possible before they had a chance to collapse.

Just out of oven!

It rose!!! (just a little bit!)

Then I tried to get the soufflés out of the ramekins.  This did not go overly well, the soufflés were quite well attached to the sides and would not budge easily – giving up, I served them in the ramekins.  It meant you had to be extremely careful eating them to make sure you didn’t hit the still scolding hot ramekins with your hands. This also had the unfortunate consequence of slightly wilting the salad.

Overall I think these weren’t bad for a first attempt.  They did sink slightly after a few minutes, but they also came away from the sides of the (red-hot) ramekins as they cooled which made them a little easier to eat.  The leek flavour was nice and the texture of the potato worked surprisingly well.  They weren’t the prettiest soufflés in the world but I was pretty chuffed all the same.

Fondue!!!!!!

As I’ve stated before, I love cheese!  The idea of a meal which largely consists of cheese is my idea of food heaven.  Having had a bit of a stressful week and with the weather turning bitter again I decided it was the perfect time for comfort food; fondue!

The Research (or things you never knew about Fondue)

In search of an nice authentic recipe I did some research and discovered (via the wonders of Wikipedia), that fondue is not the ancient alpine peasant dish I believed. This was because only the rich in the cities could afford the expensive cheeses in days gone by.  True, there is evidence of fondue like dishes as far back as far back as 1699, but the dish really only became widespread in Switzerland after it was heavily promoted in the 1930s by the Swiss Cheese union, Schweizerische Käseunion. This was part of their efforts increase cheese consumption (a fine and noble aim if I may say so).  They were so successful that both Fondue and Raclette were later adopted as the national dishes.

The Recipe

History aside, fondue is a wonderfully simple dish to make.  To make mine I borrowed a lovely 70’s orange and brown enamel fondue set from my parents.  This came complete with meths burner, but being unable to find any meths in the supermarket (maybe in the summertime?) I had to resort to tea lights to keep my pot warm once the fondue was made.

To actually make the fondue I started by rubbing the inside of the pot with a cut clove of garlic before placing the pot on the stove and heating up 175ml of white wine.  While the wine was heating I grated 150g of Emmental and 150g of Gruyere cheese which I then started to add slowly to the wine.

Heating the cheese and wine

Eventually I had melted all the cheese into the wine; however both liquids seemed determined to stay separate.  It was time for the magic ingredient – cornflour!  The cornflour helps to stabilize the mixture to give a smooth texture that doesn’t separate even as it cools.  I mixed 1 and a half tablespoons of cornflour with 1 tablespoon of Chambord Black Raspberry Liquor (the traditional recipes call for kirsch, but I don’t have any, Chambord was the closest thing in the house!).  The resulting pink liquid was then poured into the wine and cheese mixture.

Adding the cornflour and chambord mixture

A couple more minutes of heating and plenty of stirring produced a silky fondue ready to eat.  I transferred the pot to the stand with the tea lights to keep it warm.

All served up and ready to eat!

To dip into this gooey concoction I had cubed up some soft white bread.  I had also chopped up some nice smoked ham and some tomato flesh.   Apparently etiquette dictates that the long forks should only be used to dip food into the pot and transfer it to your plate.  Once there you should eat the morsels with your knife and fork.  While this may avoid the dreaded double dipping and consequent sharing of germs or saliva, it’s really not that fun.  Instead we decided to throw caution to the wind and eat straight from the fork.

Gooey cheesy bread - Heaven!

The fondue was great fun.  We both lost a couple of pieces of bread, but these were scooped up towards the end.  Although very rich and with a quite strong alcohol flavour it was easy to finish the lot!  A wonderful way to enjoy cheese and warm up on a cold January evening!

All gone!

Making my own goats cheese!

Cheese is one of my favourite things in the world; I would rather sit down with a piece of cheese than a piece of chocolate.  I especially love a tangy crumbly goat’s cheese either as it comes, grilled or in food!

Last Christmas my dad got a book on making cheese and bought the kit to have a go.  Over the year he made some soft cheeses and a couple of cheddars, all of which all turned out pretty well.

While I was home this Christmas, I asked if we could get the kit out and have a go at making some goats cheeses this was something I had always wanted to try and my dad was happy to have a go.  Looking at the recipes, it turned out that the methods for making goats cheese were very different from those for cows milk cheeses and appeared to be more straight forward.

My goats milk

Suitably encouraged we cracked on.  The first thing we needed to do was to heat the 3 litres of milk  to 76°F (24.5°C).  To do this we made a large ban marie rather than applying direct heat to allow us more precision.

Adding the milk and heating it

With the milk at the correct temperature it was time to add the starter culture.  The quantities of starter are too small to measure on normal weighing scales (less than 1g each time).  The cheese making kit came with a sachet containing enough culture for 50 l litres of milk and my dad divides off the appropriate amount by eye.  With the approximate amount of starter separated off we put this in the milk and stirred.

Seperating the starter and mixing it in

Next up was the rennet.  The rennet is dissolved in water to be added and the amount required was far less than for cows milk.  Most of the cows milk recipes call for several drops of the rennet, but goat’s cheese only needed 1/5^th of a drop. This was achieved by putting one drop in 5 tablespoons of water and then only adding one tablespoon of the mix to the milk.  After adding the rennet the mixture needed to be stirred vigorously!

Adding the rennet and stirring!

At this point, rather than having to try and keep the cheese at a constant temperature for a couple of hours using the ban marie like you need to for cows cheese (a very difficult task!) , we just had to leave the cheese to set.  This would take two days and the only condition was that the mixture shouldn’t be allowed to go over 72°F (22°C).  We covered the pot containing our millk and placed it in the nice cool utility room.

Leaving the mix to set

Coming back to the pot two days later I was pleased to see that the mix had indeed set!  The next thing to do was to get it into moulds in order to allow the whey to drain away.  The mix was very soft and the curds quite fragile, which reminded me of blancmange (I could see why you can’t cut the curds and drain the whey as you would with cows milk).  Getting the mix into the moulds was therefore quite difficult.

The curds and whey once the rennet has worked

Our kit had our small soft cheese moulds and one large press so rather than make four cheeses all the same I decided to add some flavouring to the small moulds.  I choose plain salt, lemon rind and ground black pepper, some chopped chives and something called spice mix for feta which my mum had brought back from Greece (it is for sprinkling on feta in salads and contained chilli, thyme, oregano and rosemary).  I left the mix in the large mould plain, but by the time I had filled it, the mix had small amounts of the other four flavouring that had fallen out of the holes of the smaller moulds.

The cheeses in the moulds

After an hour of so the mould had dropped quite a bit, and having plenty of mix left I topped them up some more.  Not wanting to waste my remaining curds and whey, I lined a sieve with muslin and poured in the rest of my mix.  The muslin was then gathered and squeezed to get rid of some of the whey before being hung over the sink to drip.

Starting the muslin cheese

The cheeses needed to be left for another two days during which time would shrink and become firmer as the whey drained away.  After a day we turned the small cheeses totally over (it would be impossible to do the large one!), to make sure as much whey as possible came out.  At this stage it became apparent that some of the cheeses were draining much better than others. In fact, the salted cheese was draining so badly that we didn’t even attempt to turn it but just tried to clear the draining holes.  The mix in the muslin had shrunk dramatically.

Turning the cheeses and the shrunken muslin cheese

After being left for the full two days (four days after I started this process!) it finally the moment of truth – time to reveal the final cheeses.  I laid out some cling film for each cheese and turned them out.  The feta mix was the firmest, followed by the lemon and black pepper and the slightly looser chive cheese. These small mould cheeses had a soft almost cream cheese texture. Unfortunately the salted cheese and the large cheese were disasters and didn’t hold together at all.  They sadly had to go in the bin. Thankfully the muslin cheese was a great success and was very solid and even crumbly!

The final cheeses!

So in the end my yield wasn’t great.  I got three small cheeses and the scraps from the muslin from three litres of milk.  Despite the small amount I was still very pleased with them.  It may have taken four days but I was really chuffed with the end result, as the small cheeses had really taken on the flavours that had been added. They were great on crackers or mixed through pasta.  The muslin cheese was more like the goats cheese you can buy in the shops and although it could have done with a bit of salt was nice to nibble on.  I may not be making cheese again anytime soon but it was a lovely family activity for the break!

Squash, Roasted Garlic and Goats Cheese Lasagne

My unidentified squash

Back in Cardiff Autumn is well underway, the trees are changing colour and the shops are full of my favourite vegetable – Squash.  There are many different varieties of squash in a wonderful range of autumnal colours and sizes and I love to cook with them (even though I usually have no idea what variety I’m using!).  For this lasagne I was using a green and orange squash which tapered to a point (please let me know if you know what it was!) and weighed just under a kilo.  This gave plenty of flesh for a lasagne for two

My Ingredients

The rest of my ingredients (for 2) were:

• 50g goats cheese
• 6 cloves of garlic (nice fat ones!)
• 200g lasagne sheets
• A can/carton of chopped tomatoes
• Squeeze of tomato puree
• A small onion
• Tablespoon of sage
• About 250mls skimmed milk
• A couple of tablespoons of cornflour
• Salt and pepper

The first thing I did was scoop out the core, peel the squash and chop it into 1½ – 2cm cubes.  I then tossed the cubes in a couple of tablespoon of oil and the sage and mixed with the whole, unpeeled garlic cloves.  The whole lot was roasted them in the oven for 30-40 minutes, at 200°C, till soft and starting to brown.

Roasting the squash, sage and garlic

Once the squash was cooked I started on my tomato sauce first squeezing the soft middle from the garlic cloves, chopping it and gently frying the result with some finally chopped onions.  When the onions were nice and translucent I added the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree and plenty of pepper and left the lot to gently simmer for about 10 minutes.

The chopped cooked garlic, tomato sauce, and adding the roasted squash

I also made a white sauce by combining the milk with the cornflour, some nutmeg and seasoning and heating till this thickened and chopped up the goats cheese into small pieces.  All that was left to do then was assemble the lasagne layering up the two sauces, cheese and pasta.  This was all topped with plenty of white sauce and cheese and then baked in the oven for about 30 minutes.

Layering the lasagne, before going in the oven and after cooking

The resulting lasagne is filling without being heavy and full of flavour.  The sweetness of the squash is tempered by the deep garlic and tangy cheese.  It’s a favourite in my house and it’s also pretty easy to scale up (I’ve made it for eight) provided that you can get a big enough pan to cook it in!  I’m going to be making this quite a few more times before the winter is over!

Served up on the plate

My time in the sun: Maltese Cuisine

Enjoying the Sun

The reason for the recent absence of posts is that I’ve been on holiday.  The majority of my time away was spent in Malta.  I had a great time and ate lots of food and now I’ve returned I want to share my experiences of Maltese cuisine (there were no maltesers involved much to the disappointment of my partner).

 

Malta is made up of three islands, Malta, Gozo and Cominio, situated about 93km from Sicily sitting between Europe and North Africa.  People first settled in Malta 7000 years ago, and although it is now an independent republic, Malta has been invaded many times over the years.  As a result its cuisine, much like its culture, takes influence from both its geography and varied ownership having many Mediterranean and Arabic influences while maintaining its own character.

 

Maltese fare is generally rustic farmers’ sort of food.  That’s not to say that it can’t be refined, there are plenty of restaurants serving fine dining versions, but at its heart it’s a comforting cuisine with a lot of stews, soups and pies/pasties.  To my frustration it was not always that easy to find restaurants serving traditional Maltese cuisine, there were far too many places offering English food (fish and chips!) or Pasta and Pizza.  In the end, after much searching and consultation of guidebooks we did manage to try and fair amount of traditional food.

 

One of the main meats that was offered was rabbit (fenek).  Rabbit is so popular that they have apparently nearly been hunted to extinction on the islands.  It is often served in a red wine and bay sauce, but can be just fried.  It’s quite rare to see rabbit on the menu outside of very posh restaurants in Britain (although I did once have a lovely rabbit curry in a pub in west Wales) and I was eager to give it a go.  More often than not we were served half a rabbit, which always seemed a huge amount (I’m only little!) but provided great variety as we got both lean loin and flavorsome legs to chew on.

Rabbit in Red Wine Sauce

Another popular dish appearing on many menus was Bragoli or “beef olives”.  These consist of minced beef mixed with herbs, spices and bacon (and occasionally a hardboiled egg, but that was not a good addition!) wrapped in a thin slice of beef.  The parcel (or olive) is then cooked as part of a stew (tomatoes, peas, red wine) and served with chips or rice, although I suspect that bread may have been more authentic.

Bragoli, or beef olives

Being an Island there was also plenty of fish and seafood on offer with squid and octopus proving to be popular choices both in stews and as pasta accompaniments.  It was October when I visited so the Lampuka (Mahi Mahi or Dolphin Fish) should have been in season, but unfortunately I never found any to try.  There was however plenty of other fresh fish options around (I had some gorgeous Sea Bass).

spaghetti with octopus

As nice as the main meals were, it was the snacks that I loved.  The Maltese love their pastries, both savoury and sweet!  In the savoury category you get pastizzi and qassatat made with puff and shortcrust pastry respectively and filled with either cheese or peas.  The peas were a hit with my partner and I and these made brilliant mid morning/afternoon snacks!

a pea qassatat

Sweet wise I enjoyed both freshly fried date pastries (mqaret) and fried pasty tubes filled with sweet ricotta (kannoli) immensely.  Luckily for me we did a lot of walking during this holiday, otherwise I think I may have had trouble fitting in my clothes by the end of the holiday!

kannoli

date pastries

Despite the lack of traditional restaurants you can see that food is still central to life in Malta.   Everywhere we went there were people selling local produce such as the delicious gozo goats cheeslets (ġbejniet) – available fresh, peppered or dried and preserved – honey, capers and jams along with fruit liqueurs.  I brought home quite a stash!

pomegrante jam and gozo cheese

The final thing I want to mention is the (unofficial) national drink of Kinnie.  This is a soft drink made from bitter oranges and herbs and is advertised everywhere, I did not however once see anyone drinking it!  Undeterred and in the spirit of adventure I bought a small bottle to try.  It’s not unpleasant but fairly non descript, if anything it tasted a little gingery, but without being told I would have struggled to guess just what was in it.  I was glad I tried it, but not something to be exported home!

Kinnie

A new cook book, and a meal goes badly wrong

An absolute disaster, so much for the romantic dinner idea.....

Before I begin I would like to apologize for the length of this post, it seems that I had a lot to get off my chest about this meal!  It’s been a cathartic experience writing this!

I have a new cookbook; one which I hoped would allow me to combine my love of posh food with my less than extravagant means.  It’s Jason Atherton’s Gourmet Food for a Fiver and the idea of the book is that you can create a two course gourmet meal from the book for £5 per person (still not that cheap I feel!).

The book itself is great, the pictures of the food look sumptuous, the recipes appear to be clear and direct, there are even tips on how to best present the food for that restaurant look (an area where I can fall down).  There is a good selection of starters mains (they actually appear together as a savoury section split into veg, meat and fish) and lots of desserts so plenty of options to choose from. Jason also provides some seasonal menu suggestions and other themes.  Most recipes are for four people, but can be easily scaled up or down as needed.   My only issue would be that, since the starters and mains run into each other with no division, you end up trying to guess from the portion size which is which.

However, to my dismay, my first attempt at a two course meal from there was a disaster, although without trying some more recipes I don’t know if the problem was me or the book.  For my two courses I had decided to cook the white asparagus, pasta and poached egg for starter and the confit chicken leg with chorizo and bean stew for main.

The problems started with my actual choices as try as I might I could not find any white asparagus, probably due to it’s being out of season. Rather than use the more bitter green variety I decided to abandon that element of the starter which reduced it to just pasta and a poached egg (which just doesn’t sound so “gourmet”).  The rest of the starter went well.  I managed to make the pasta with creamy mushroom sauce (Jason’s alternative to Macaroni cheese according to the book :-p) and poach my eggs (nice soft gooey centre!) then, adding the shavings of parmesan, I served it up. It managed to looked not to dissimilar to the picture in the book (minus some ingredients of course!).

The ingredients for my starter

The result was tasty but not really something I would have put together. However we were starving by this time (all is revealed later) and so wolfed it down.  I’m not really sure if the missing asparagus would have made the meal feel more coherent, but it would certainly have added to the variety in texture as both the pasta and the egg were a bit soggy.  I also had plenty of pasta spare despite halving the recipe, but this is not a complaint!  I think that maybe a few salad leaves could have improved this starter and the recipe does suggest a couple of watercress sprigs for garnish but I forgot these. It just didn’t occur to me at the time, my mind was full of the trouble with the main course!

The starter in the book (left) versus what I served (right)

Preparation for my main had begun the day before with the dry brining of my chicken legs.  This involved covering the chicken in 2 tablespoons of salt, x leave of sage and 2 stalks of rosemary and leaving it in the fridge for at least 12 hours.  Then, 4 hours before we were due to eat (the recipe involved a lot of cooking and resting!) these legs were submerged in a large quantity of oil into which more salt, sage and rosemary were added.  The book said that to confit the legs would take 2 1/2 hours on 90C and that I should turn the legs half way through cooking. So I dutifully put my pot in the oven and got on with my evening.

After around an hour and a half I returned to the oven to turn my chicken and noticed that it didn’t really seem to be cooking very much! Undeterred, I checked the book again, verified I was doing as it said and put the pot back in the oven to continue as before.  I was starting to get a bit uneasy about it, but knowing that confiting is not a quick method (and having never done it before) I assumed that this was all normal and the final hour would transform my rather raw chicken into soft succulent perfection.

Well I was wrong!  When 3 hours had gone by (I gave it a little extra to be sure) I checked on the chicken again, it did look a bit more cooked, but sticking a knife into one of the legs resulted in rather a lot of blood spewing forth which told another story.  At this point my sense of unease turned into a full blown panic, as with three hours now gone and the meat still only partially cooked, I knew this was never going to be done in time.

In my panic I decided that the best way forward was to apply more heat so whacked the oven up to 180C and stuck the pot in again before warning my partner that the meal may be a little later than initially planned.

At 180C the chicken still took another hour to cook and so it was getting quite late by the time I drained the oil and covered the legs, allowing them to rest while I prepared and ate the starter and got one with accompaniments.

The chicken at differnt stages; top is dry brining, left is after 3 hours at 90C and right is after an additional hour at 180C

The chicken would have two accompaniments: a chorizo and bean stew and some roasted garlic.  The garlic was to be created by wrapping in foil several cloves of garlic n their skin, thyme, sage and lots of olive oil.  This parcel was to bake in the oven for 35/40 mins at 180C.  The bean stew took less time and was prepared by frying chorizo to release the oil before removing the meat and adding stock and cream.  The liquor is then reduced before the meat is returned to the pan along with time butter beans and thyme. Pretty straight forward really but just to add to my many woes I managed to burn my first lot of chorizo and so had to make this twice!

The garlic ready to go in the oven

The ingredients for the bean and chorizo stew

Finally it was time to serve up this main.  You’re supposed to fry off the chicken legs before serving to crisp the skin, however my over enthusiastic application of heat meant that my legs were now quite fragile so this was not possible and I served them straight up (apologies for the photo, my heart just wasn’t in it by this time!) and then it was time to eat.

The main in the book (left) versus what I served (right)

It would be fair to say that this was not a success.  The chicken, though wonderfully tender and falling off the bone tasted only of oil and salt and was inedible (to give him credit my partner tried very hard to eat this having seen how much effort I put it).  The garlic was in the main part just black and solid.  There was the odd soft sweet part but these took much searching to discover.  The bean stew was okay, but that was all.

I have to be honest and say that this was probably the worst meal I have ever cooked. Given how long I had spent trying to cook it I was devastated and gave up eating all together.

I don’t want to blame the book, but I really did stick to the recipe closely, maybe my technique was out. Needless to say I won’t be attempting this again anytime soon.  I will however give the book another try, it may be that one recipe was off, but there are many more to try and who knows, maybe I’ll have more luck with a pud!

Macaroni Cheese, with extra veg

Macaroni cheese is such a wonderfully versatile dish, and one on which everyone has their own take.  It seems to be universally liked as a comforting dish, that sooths the soul and warms the heart. Yet the basic recipe is so easy to add to, making endless variations possible and keeping it feeling fresh.

Many moons ago I remember eating the Kraft packets macaroni cheese, to which you added milk and butter. For some reason these stopped being stocked in the UK long ago and so I learned to make my own.  Now I prefer my mac and cheese homemade and have been baked in the oven, I love the added texture of the crunchy dried top.

I think that smoky bacon works particularly well with the dish, but for this particular adaptation I decided to keep things vegetarian and went for peas, leeks, mushrooms and tomatoes (my compulsion to get as many veg as possible into my partners’ diet getting the better of me again).  As I’m currently trying to keep things low fat I made my cheese sauce with just skim milk, corn flour and cheese, you don’t really miss the butter and full fat milk under all the other flavours.

After cooking the macaroni and sauce I added the peas, mushrooms and leeks (which I had steamed earlier, as I hate coming across some raw leek in a meal!) before transferring to a dish for baking in the oven.  I then sprinkled over my deseeded and chopped tomatoes and little more cheese before baking till a golden crust appeared.

The end result doesn’t quite have the sticky cheese substance of a traditional macaroni cheese, but I think it’s a great meal all the same, and it boxed up great for lunches!

The I Diet by Gino D’Acampo

I decided to buy The I Diet after seeing some of the recipes previewed in a Sunday magazine, and after trying some of those, and seeing that it was half price on Amazon I decided to give it a try.

The book is contains a collection of 100 healthy recipes (well 93 since there are 7 in the naughty corner at the back) split down into the categories of  breakfast, antipasti, lunch, soups and salads, pasta, pizza and risotto, fish, meat and deserts.  The recipes are written by the Gino D’Acampo with an introduction by the dietician Juliette Kellow.

The beginning of the book is contains explanations of the most commonly used ingredient and some of their health benefits as well as some handy tables comparing the amount of calories and fat in different cheeses and alcoholic drinks as well as the calories burnt undertaking various activities.  There is also a lot of focus on low GI foods, which is later reflected in the amount of recipes that involve pulses.  This is all followed some sample meal plans based on consumption of either 1500 or 2000 calories a day.

So far I’ve cooked about 10 dishes from the book, including some great salads, but I’ve got many more on my to cook list so the book won’t be resting on the shelf anytime soon.  A definite favourite is the little shell pasta with peas, ham and eggs, in which the pasta is cooked in stock before stirring through beaten eggs.  Cooking pasta in stock is something that had never occurred to me to do before, and this dish tastes amazing, not at all like something to be found in a diet book!  The addition of chilli flakes to the recipe also surprised me, and I wasn’t sure how it would combine with the cheese, but it actually works extremely well giving a gentle background heat.

I have spotted one mistake, a recipe for “prawn & bean salad with basil & sun-dried tomatoes” in which no mention is made of any sun-dried tomatoes; however the dish tasted great anyway so I don’t think I was missing much.  Everything else so far has been well explained, and could be easily followed and perfected by even the most inexperienced cook.  For that I would be happy to recommend it.  The pictures look tempting and I think the rage of meals included would mean that most people could find something to appeal to their tastes.  Another great thing is that the ingredients used are easy to find, and not too expensive, Gino even champions the use of frozen veg.  A great book for tasty everyday meals, with a few dishes that have that extra something making them suitable for a special meal.

Although this is a diet book I must say that I’ve never used it as such, but just picked out different recipes to try as the mood takes me.  As nice as the as the food is, I love trying different things too much to stick to just Italian for every meal.