Whole Baked Cauliflower with Tomato & Olive Sauce
Fifteen Chocolate Brownies
I’ll start at the beginning with my trip to the fish shop. Let me just say that I didn’t want to go back to THE fish shop (yes, you know the one), but unfortunately it’s convenient and on this occasion convenience won out over taking a stand. So I turned up, trying to remain calm and positive and luckily for her the Fish Shop Lady didn’t serve me. It was the friendly Fish Shop Man though.
Me: (after I’d ordered my prawns and octopus) Do you remember me?
FSM: Ummm…?
Me: I ordered the lobster. The whole lobster. The alive one.
FSM: Oh yeah. Of course. How did that go?
Me: I’ve got my camera here. Let me show you a photo.
FSM: (looking at picture on camera) Wow, that looks amazing. There’s nothing better than a lobster cooked from scratch is there? So much better than just using the tails or an already cooked one.
Me: (incredulous – is he serious!) You’re so right. So right.
FSM: So, what are you? Some sort of amateur chef in your spare time?
Me: No, I’m just doing this thing where I cook every recipe in one cookbook in one year and blog about it.
FSM: Blog about it? Really? Well did you write about us? Did you say in your blog that you bought the lobster from “..... Seafood”?
Me: (nearly choking trying to control my laughter/horror/laughter/horror) Ah no. I didn’t write about you. Should have though.
FSM: You can go back and edit those blogs though can’t you? You could add our name in.
Me: Maybe. I don’t know if I know how to do that…
FSM: Well if you need anything, you come to us and we’ll sort you out. Any seafood you need throughout the experiment. We’ll look after you.
Me: (in a high pitched, slightly strangled voice as I turned and walked away) OK. Thanks. So helpful.
So that was where Friday started. Oh dear. If only the FSM knew that he did feature in the blog. If only he knew…
Once home, I whipped up Jamie’s brownies. These are the brownies they serve at his restaurant Fifteen and apparently are quite a hit. I’d never actually made brownies before this point and I’m quite fussy when it comes to brownies, so I was keen to find out if this recipe would be a keeper. The nuts & dried fruit were optional, so I pretty quickly decided to leave them out. Not a huge fan of nuts in baked goods actually. The recipe was so easy – just a whole lot of chocolate, some cocoa too (just for good measure) butter, flour, sugar and eggs and into the oven for 30 minutes. Jamie says that when you stick the skewer in to check if their cooked, the skewer should actually come out dirty. Not clearly-uncooked-dirty, but clearly gooey-brownie-dirty. A simple distinction no? Well, the skewer came out dirty and not only that, but once I’d let them cool and then sliced them into bite size pieces, the knife was coming out pretty dirty as well. I think I had achieved my ultimate brownie. Crispy on the outside, gooey in the middle. Yum!
I took a short break from party cooking, to cook myself dinner. The humble cauliflower reigns again and slow cooked in a saucepan with onion, garlic, tomato, parsley, anchovies and olives, it was a soggy and delicious mess.
Dinner out of the way and I was back in the kitchen, but not with Jamie this time. The rest of my party food menu was from several other sauces – delicious magazine, The Complete Book of Modern Entertaining and AWW COOK.
First up was the arancini. Now, I’ve made arancini before, not from a recipe, but simply using trial and error. They tasted good and the risotto itself was good, but as balls they weren’t great. They fell apart and didn’t crisp up. Tasty but not picturesque. But the love that went into the arancini on Friday night was enough to make me feel pretty good about how they were going to turn out. The moment where I fell asleep standing up, one hand dipped in the flour bowl, the other in the egg-wash bowl, was the moment I knew I have real issues. Who falls asleep on their feet in the kitchen? Go to bed woman. They’re just risotto balls for god’s sake.
Well rested and ready to go, Saturday began with marinating the beef fillet and popping it in the oven. This was later sliced thinly and served with mustard béarnaise and baguette. Next up were the Vietnamese Rice Paper rolls – crunchy and fresh, they are a favourite. Later in the day, I made the sausage rolls (sausage meat bought from the cute butcher, who wished me a happy weekend. Back at you Mr Cute Butcher!), followed by deep frying the arancini. I had another little moment. I can’t tell you how sensational they were and how damn excited I was by their success (especially upon tasting). I was very proud. It was worth the quick nap in the kitchen the night before – the oohs and aahs from the crowd when the arancini were served, made me supper-dooper happy.
The party overall = a great success. There was not a leftover to be had on Sunday. Let’s just not talk about the pinwheels OK?
Xx
PS – I apologise to everyone that I forced to try the Potted Crab. I myself was not game, but apparently it simply tasted like crab and butter. Now there’s a surprise.
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