Cooking the Books

[emma_p]

I’m so pleased to have introduced you I went to see her talk in DC which is where I got the book (it was out of stock on Amazon US too).

[Kenickie]

I love the Welsh rarebit from the Dairy Book.

I have Jamie's 5 Ingredients and really like it. There's some nice ideas in there and I haven't seen any that include salt or pepper as ingredients. I guess I must be a very unadvanced cook then!

Goat/Blondie: I totally do that I know best thing. And sometimes I'll put a recipe down for a particular night and P will tell me it took ages to do X and I'll be like "well obviously you didn't have to do it that way, I'd have just done ,Y and Z".

[Pippedydeadeye]

Pov has inspired me to think of a Persiana menu for my parents coming over next weekend. I’m going to make:
Spiced & salted squid
Ras el hanout chicken wraps
Quince and pomegranate glazed pork
Chargrilled aubergines with saffron yoghurt
Radish, cucumber and red onion salad
Yoghurt with cucumber, garlic & dill

My dad doesn’t like lamb, which makes it quite difficult.

I’ve also been going through this year’s Good Food magazines and making a list of things. The Brazil nut burritos look amazing from January.

[kiwi]

This thread is making me want to charity shop most of my cookbooks and get new ones. Even though I Google for recipes anyway.

[absley]

. I'm planning to try the pork vindaloo with cardamom cornbread tonight, making a spinach dish in place of the beans (I'll use the same flavours).

This was so good and so easy. I want to try the vindaloo sauce with another meat, as pork is never my favourite.

I also tried the AR cookies, which emma mentioned. Not keen personally, as they were too like cookies and not enough like shortbread, but they went down well with others.

What sort of breakfast options does she have, which you like the sound of, Goat? I looked on her website but they're mostly sweet.

[Mountain Goat]

I'm interested to try that as it's such an unusual take. Was it very garlicky? What meat do you think you'd prefer?

The breakfast stuff is all savoury in the book (well, the section is called savory breakfasts, there are actually some sweet granola recipes but they're under the grains section). There is, for example, a crispy kimchi and cheddar omelette, some baked eggs with chickpeas and chorizo and some chicken fat fried eggs and kale. It's not my favourite section but it doesn't offend me.

I sort of did one of her recipes on Sat. I say sort of because obviously I felt the need to make it more complicated. It's pasta with brown butter mushrooms, buckwheat and egg yolk. It's a simple idea at heart, but I liked the use of brown butter and that she toasts buckwheat and uses it as a crunchy topping - I've not done that before and it's lovely and nutty. I made it more complicated by smoking the egg yolk (this was wonderful, even though I had too much pasta for the egg yolk to sauce it well, due to greed) and making the pasta. Because I've actually never made pasta before. I KNOW.

It's for a few reasons: I don't have a roller and I don't have much space for hand rolling - pastry is a massive pain in my stupid kitchen for example. Also Mr G does his spag bol every Sunday and that's usually enough pasta for me for one week, so I don't really think of it. BUT. My nephew bought me some lovely semolato pasta flour for Christmas (and some other things, shush) and Mr G is away so I thought it was a good time to potentially fuck up the pasta as it didn't matter. It actually went well, I made pappardelle as that seemed easiest, and it all went smoothly except I did not consider the spring back effect - so I managed to roll the pasta out so it was transparent thin, but after the cut ribbons had been sitting about a bit, they sprang back and went in the water too thick. However, it was just me and I think that pappardelle can take being a bit ..umm..rustic, and it tasted good. I added some greenery too, for health.

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Somewhat later, I remembered about the toasted buckwheat sitting on a pot on the kitchen counter.

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Fresh India and the new Anna Jones arrived on Sat and Fresh India looks fantastic. I've already bookmarked about five things to make very soon, and I've only flicked through a third of it. The AJ seems good but I was less excited, maybe just because I was already at excitement overload thanks to Alison and Meera.

[absley]

I don't remember it being too garlicky. I'm not sure what meat - pork is traditional and beef seems to be most often mentioned but I think I might try chicken. I think it would work with prawns or a meaty fish as well - just cook the sauce on its own for a while before adding the fish.

I saw that mushroom and egg yolk pasta and also thought I would give it a try when D is out (he's anti-mushroom). I'd need to buy some buckwheat though.

[Mountain Goat]

I can put it on my "Things to Do With Ling" list. It sounds to me like chicken would work well, probably better than beef.

I'm just flicking through AR to see if there's anything I can make for my last night of freedom with things I have in the fridge, and there's a recipe for turmeric roasted carrots with seeds and labneh I could do without leaving the house.

Did you smoke anything?

(with your gun. I am not insinuating that you are high. )

[absley]

We smoked some negronis - they weren't really smoky enough though, so D needs to practice.

I didn't get to making labneh, so you should do that in my place, with your carrots.

[Mountain Goat]

I have some labneh in a pot (from my cheesebox, I wouldn't normally buy labheh when I have a pot of yoghurt around the place) and I was thinking of smoking it.

I've yet to get the knack of always getting it to pump out enough smoke, it seems to be very variable. I mean of course I just do it twice when it's not pumping much out, but it is difficult at the moment to be sure how much to smoke things when the amount of smoke per blast isn't stable.

[emma_p]

You are making me want to cook and I just delivered all my spices to a friend

[Mountain Goat]

You're getting fed by Momofuku though! (when is that? you're in Vegas now right? is it tonight? )

[emma_p]

Vegas was Saturday night - we flew back yesterday. It was epic but so completely over the top. We had pre-ordered the bo ssam for 4 and it would have fed at least twice as many people. I felt so bad that I had to ask for it to be boxed up and I gave it to a homeless person who was so pleased.

[Mountain Goat]

Oh, I didn't realise you were back! That sounds excellent but a bit ridiculous; lucky homeless person though.

[Pippedydeadeye]

That’s what Momofuku was like in Toronto. There was so much leftover it was embarrassing. The one local guy had to take it all and give it to his neighbours.

[emma_p]

We are back in DC for just over a week then back, back!

We got bonus oysters which were so good (we did manage to eat all of those ;) )

[absley]

Bonus oysters

I do need to play, as well as get D to - he was v gung ho and planning to make several things until it wasn't as easy/obvious as expected!

[Mountain Goat]

Bonus oysters are a definite...bonus. Only a week till you come back though! How are you feeling about it?

I smoked the labneh, though I'd recommend not filling the kitchen with smoke on day when it's -1. I had to have the back door open for longer than was entirely comfortable. I did it with the spiced lentils from the same book (similar flavours). It was all lovely, though I should have let the carrots caramelise more as it was all missing a bit of sweetness. Some onions with the lentils would have helped too.

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[Pippedydeadeye]

I made pretty much every non-lamb dish in Persiana today. The chargrilled aubergines with saffron yoghurt went down a storm; my mum kept pinching them and rearranging the plate while I was cooking the rest. They looked so pretty too.

[absley]

I tried a few new things this weekend.

I did leg of lamb with the Honey & Co rose and spice marinade which I really liked esp as the rose comes through. To accompany it I did Nopi's roasted aubergine with black garlic (so good and a few people's favourite dish, that I made; also the perfect way to use up a tub of black garlic that has been hanging around in the fridge for a few years too long! ), the green salad with sumac and allspice red onions (nice but also simple enough to just add to whatever you're making), burnt spring onion dip (so good, again much-liked, and the cream cheese makes it seem like a dirty treat), peanut & coconut sauce (it did go with the lamb but I wasn't keen and won't bother again). Plus a Duck Soup salad of pomegranate, kohlrabi and dill (quite sharp as there's so much lemon juice but it went well with everything else, which was much richer).

Pudding was the Jerusalem rose & cardamom rice pudding which I loved but will cut back on the honey and oomph up the rose, in the syrup which is drizzled over; v much hit and miss though as two out of my four guests really didn't like it.

Flicking through Honey & Co I saw some lovely puddings - has anyone tried any?

Eta. I also did the smoked labneh, with my smoking gun - so much easier than faffing with foil, tea etc