On Monday night, I finally made a recipe that I’d been blissfully ignoring for a while and even though it turned out looking more like baby food than the last risotto I made, it was somewhat more gourmet than Heinz.
Tomato, Basil & Ricotta Risotto
To the basic risotto recipe (which, lets face it, I’m a bit of a gun at these days!), I added the tomatoes that I’d prepared earlier. They were deseeded, chopped and marinated in red wine vinegar, S&P and oregano. After I’d stirred them through, I took the risotto off the heat and added the ricotta.
So the thing with ricotta is, I don’t really like it. I think that, coupled with the fact that I just hadn’t really been all that fussed about this recipe at all, meant that when reading through it before writing my shopping list, I obviously completely ignored the part where Jamie said to use crumbly ricotta, not creamy ricotta, and that if I couldn’t get the crumbly stuff, to use crumbly goats cheese instead. Oops. What did I have? Yep, creamy ricotta. Ahem…
Anyway, apart from the fact that I had the wrong ingredient, I still followed instructions and baked the ricotta with dried chilli flakes and some olive oil for ten minutes. Whereas the crumbly version is meant to sort of go crispy and golden, my creamy version just turned into a puddle of goo. Yum. Incorrect, but still yum. And I don’t even like ricotta!
Needless to say that when I added it to the risotto, it didn’t exactly stiffen the mixture. Rather the opposite in fact and once the knob of butter, the basil and the parmesan were added as well, it turned out looking like a very tasty and sophisticated baby food.
Apart from the texture and the look, the best way to describe it was Italy on a plate. For babies.
My Favourite Crunchy Squid with Lime & Chilli Mayonnaise
Unbelievable Root Vegetable Salad
Grilled Chilli Dressing
Homemade Ice Cream
Plus a Pink Velvet Cake (not Jamie though!)
I think I’ve mentioned I’ve been taking orders and Ween had baggsed the crunchy squid recipe a while ago, so of course it had to be done for her birthday.And thanks very much Jamie for recommending serving the crunchy squid with the root vegie salad which apparently goes really well with the grilled chilli dressing.Hello menu choices made.
First of all I made the lime chilli mayo – mayo with chopped fresh chillis, lime and lemon zest and juice and S&P.Very zingy.
I then sliced the vegies for the salad.I sharpened my Global knife, got in position and got stuck in.There is nothing more therapeutic than concentrating on finely chopping vegetables, especially when you’re knife is sharp, the music is loud and the vegies are varied.I had carrots, fresh beetroots, fennel, witlof, celery and radishes.A veritable rainbow of root vegies!They looked fantastic and I had a lovely chopping time. It was all quite Geena Davis a la The Long Kiss Goodnight – don’t you just love the scene where her previous life as an assassin first starts to shine through and her husband and kid start throwing her all kinds of things from the crisper and she just keeps on chopping like a highly skilled and trained killer.Oh wait, that’s what she is!Well, I’m no spy or assassin, but I don’t mind a bit of knife skill in the kitchen!
Once the chopping was done, I made the dressing.Jamie gives two options for grilling the chillis.Either hold the whole chillis with tongs over a naked flame on the gas stove, rotating them til they’re chargrilled all over (pricked a few times with a knife so they don’t burst. Could you imagine?! Firey.)OR as with me, if you don’t have a gas stove, pop them under a hot grill for a few minutes.Once done, put them in a bowl and cover with glad wrap for 15 minutes, so they soften in their own steam.Then I peeled them, scraped out the seeds and finely chopped.Add olive oil, lemon juice and finely chopped mint.Dressing done.
Finally the squid.Unlike the norm of scoring then slicing then cooking, this time it was scoring, cooking then slicing.So I got my oil nice and hot, I scored the squid (tubes flattened out, but whole – I’m not even sure that makes sense, but you know what I mean right?!), dipped them in seasoned flour then dropped them into the oil.They curled into long tunnels of curly squid and once they were cooked, I sliced them into curly strips of squid.There was no real flavour to the squid except for the little bit of S&P in the flour, but once it was served up with the lime chilli mayo and the sensational salad and grilled chilli dressing, it was perfection.
And finally, the birthday cake!I ventured outside of Mr Oliver’s bubble and went for a classic AWW cake.Until recently, when I ate one of Weens specialty Red Velvet cupcakes, I actually had no idea what red velvet was all about, but Ween’s cupcakes were so spectacular, that when I saw a recipe for a quadruple-decker Pink Velvet cake, I knew I had to make it!And you know what, it looked exactly like the picture!This may not be the best way for me to gauge success in the kitchen, but it’s a big part of it for me.If it looks like the picture I’m aiming for, then I can be so happy about that, I don’t even care about the flavour.Sad.Luckily, in this instance, it was satisfying on both fronts!
I served the cake up with the homemade ice cream that I’d made on the weekend, which being rock hard, had several sessions in the wave to soften it up, before we could break through with the scoop.But the flavour?Just like ice cream!
I’ll admit I was surprised by this, coz Jamie’s ice cream is quite simply custard (cream, milk sugar, vanilla, eggs) cooked, cooled and frozen.Though I can’t imagine normal ice cream is as simple as this (hence the doubt), it can’t be too far off, coz the homemade was almost as good as the Blue Ribbon.
And so.Another birthday bites the dust, another multiple recipe session is ticked off.
We had an absolute ball, Ween and I, and though she might kill me for putting these photos on public display, I just have to.HB WB.
Tomorrow is Ween’s birthday and I’m cooking her a birthday dinner filled with all her favourite things.OK, so maybe not all of them, but hopefully a few.I can’t reveal anything here until after tomorrow’s dinner, coz Ween will be reading, but I am looking forward to it!Tonight however, was a night of cake baking, so dinner had to be quick.
Delicious Crab Crostini
This was the last recipe in the crab chapter and I can’t say I’m too sad to see the back them.Look, I do love a fresh mud crab, cooked in the wok with salt and pepper, sucking out the meat, the juices running down your arms.But you know I haven’t had the best of luck with whole crustaceans during my experiment, so I avoided the whole crab thing and just went with the crab meat from Woollies.Which is fine when it’s cooked in a curry, but it’s very crabby when it’s a crostini.Check the alliteration!
I mixed the crab meat with chilli, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil and S&P.I made some aioli and toasted a bread roll.Crab crostini with aioli served.
It was actually really nice, but very crabby or fishy, you might say.And about the haunting, let’s just go with the fact that I’ve already brushed my teeth three times tonight.Gross, I know.I’m the one living with it.
Monday night is my favourite night to spend at home.The week has started and you don’t have to go through the Monday morning pain for seven more days (!!), there’s good TV and it’s just me.It’s also my favourite night to cook and I’d been looking forward to tonight’s choice for a while, especially after the pasta success last week.
Ravioli of Pecorino, Potato and Mint
The first thing was getting the potatoes in the oven, then I made the pasta dough.While the dough was in the fridge, I scooped the roasted potato flesh out of the skins and mashed it up with finely chopped mint, parmesan cheese, lemon zest, butter and S&P.Filling ready to go.
I’m actually beginning to find the long-winded process of winding the dough through the pasta maker over and over again quite therapeutic.This time it was a perfect strip, with no wrinkles or tears along the way.On 30cm sheets, I placed patties of potato filling, folded over the strip, sliced them into four pouches and then sealed them up into ravioli.They looked pretty much perfect.Irregular, but perfect…
Once the ravioli were cooked in boiling salted water, I transferred them to a pan of sizzling melted butter.Just because.Well not really. It was what Jamie said to do.But I mean really.Pasta, with potato with a butter sauce.Hello cholesterol.
Served up with a sprinkling of parmesan and some mini mint leaves, it was a very satisfying Monday night.
On Friday night I farewelled a follower.Well actually, she’s not officially following the experiment (even after repeated sessions of begging - rude!), but has been a reader from the start and I can only hope that the lovely Yae will continue to be a reader once she arrives in London for her big European adventure.
After a few farewell drinks after work, I wasn’t exactly in the mood for a big cook-up, so I went for a quick option in the salad chapter.
Return of the Egg Salad
The thing is, I don’t really like eggs.Don’t get me wrong, a fried or scrambled egg on a Sunday morning is lovely, but that’s because they’re hot.The moment a cooked egg drops below hot in the temperature stakes, I’m out.Egg sandwiches?You could not pay me to eat them.Egg salad?It’s not exactly up there.But if it’s in the book…
However, I could control the temp of the eggs when I turned them into Jamie’s egg salad, so my speedy late night dinner was not too rotten (get it?!).
I boiled the eggs aiming for soft in the middle.Cooked, peeled and cut in half.Success – the eggs were just the right amount of runny.And still hot when served up with toast and ham.
I’ve never been one of those people who eats breakfast cereal for dinner, but maybe Jamie’s egg salad can be my breakfast-for-dinner of choice.
So you know how I told you that I was being grown up and biting the bullet and getting stuck into the difficult chapters? Well I sort of, maybe, might have taken a cheeky short cut, accidentally on purpose.
Grilled & Roasted Red Mullet with Pancetta & Thyme
I chose the red mullet because I really did just want to get it out of the way. The photo in the book shows crazy red fish, with beady eyes. Ick. But deep down, I had a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn’t be able to get a whole red mullet from the FSL. And as dedicated to the experiment as I am – and you know that I am – I was not going to do a ring around Sydney fish shops trying to track down a red fish. With eyes.
So when I arrived at THE fish shop, I placed my order with the teenage-fish-shop-boy (like a teenage mutant ninja turtle!):
Me: Can I please get a mullet? A red mullet?
FSB: Um… We don’t have those.
Me: I thought you’d say that. Got something similar you can recommend?
FSB: But that’s a whole fish. We don’t really have any whole fish.
In my head: Yeah, like you don’t have any whole lobster.
Me: OK. That’s OK. It just needs to go well with thyme and pancetta…
FSB: Wait! What about sardines? They’re a whole fish. And they’re really fishy!
Me: Um… No… That’s OK. I’ll just take a piece of ling.
Pay and run. Pay and run.
Yeah yeah, I know. Really mature.
Next time, I promise there really will be eyes.
Anyhow, I got my ling home, pan fried it quickly on either side, sat two slices of lemon & a couple of sprigs of thyme on top, wrapped it with pancetta and whacked it in the oven for 10 minutes, then served it up with some cous cous and rocket.
Delicious. And no ick factor. Or eyes.
Next time, I promise…
Xx
PS – I’m planning to make ice cream on Sunday and am feeling a little nervous about the whole thing. Am I supposed to wait til the custard is completely cool, before I put it in the freezer for the first time? What kind of container do I put it in? Does it need to have a lid? Will it expand? So many unanswered questions. I’ll keep you posted.
Last night I entered the kitchen in what could only be described as a disinterested state of mind. But I left the kitchen singing my own praises. Singing them to myself in my solo apartment, but still singing nonetheless.
You see, I’ve long been in denial about two specific chapters in the cookbook. Whole fish. And fresh pasta. The whole fish chapter (there’s also a filleted fish chapter, which doesn’t rate highly either, but it’s not dire) has lots of pictures of fish that still have their eyes. Enough said. The fresh pasta chapter just spells hard work and eating dinner late.
So in order to avoid a glut of mediocre and uninspiring recipes in the final stages of my experiment, I am forcing myself to grow up and get started and am this week attempting to do one recipe from each of these two chapters.
Open Stained-Glass Lasagne with Roasted Squash
The first thing to do was get the pumpkin on the go, so I sprinkled it with ground up fennel seeds, coriander seeds & dried chilli, some cinnamon, S&P and a drizzle of oil, covered with foil and into the oven for 40 minutes til really soft.
Then I made the pasta. I halved the pasta recipe this time, because I always end up wasting loads of pasta dough. Good decision. As was the decision to take things easy and follow instructions. I think on the two previous occasions I’ve made the pasta, I’ve always been in a bit of a rush and didn’t quite give it the love it clearly needs. Well not this time. There was so much love.
Once I’d rolled out the pasta to the perfect thin-ness and cut it into lasagne size sheets, I placed sage leaves and flat-leaf parsley leaves on half of each sheet. Then folded over the other half of the sheet and pressed down to seal in the leaves.
Then I worked it through the pasta maker one last time, to create the best looking stained glass lasagne sheets you’ve ever bloody seen!
It was amazing. I was convinced that it would be a total disaster (and I will admit a few sheets hit the skids) but it actually worked perfectly. I was also pretty impressed with how much the herb leaves stretched! Giant sage leaves, oh my!
So I threw the pasta sheets (gently) into a pot of boiling salted water, mashed the squishy baked pumpkin and layered them onto the plate – pumpkin mash, amazing stained glass lasagne, pumpkin mash, amazing stained glass lasagne. You get the idea.
What a sensation. And yes I am blowing my own trumpet, but I don’t care. I absolutely rocked the kitchen last night. Sadly there was no one there to see it. Oh wait – yes you all are!
Xx
PS – have you been watching My Kitchen Rules? I’ll only admit this here, but it makes me feel pretty smug. But I suppose they are cooking under a lot of pressure…
PPS – Yes, I know I’ve gone OTT with the photos. But toot toot. James Morrison eat your heart out.
A Year In My Kitchen: 1 cookbook, 1 food lover & some culinary fun is Lizzie's first attempt at blogging. She's undertaken a cooking experiment where she's cooking every recipe in a chosen cookbook in one year. The blog combines her love of food and cooking with her passion for writing. Enjoy.
