Cornflower

Keps and cooking

    I've made another of Wilma Malcolmson's great hats. After Katie's Kep comes the Gotland Skull Kep, knitted in seven shades of Jamieson's of Shetland Spindrift.

    Again, I made a swatch to ensure my gauge was correct and the hat would fit (this one is for Mr. C. so needed to be bigger than mine), and the needles the pattern specifies were just right.

                                                 ~~~~~

    Still on the subject of Shetland, a few months ago I bought Misa Hay's beautiful cookbook A Year in my Shetland Garden. 

    On the strength of the recipes I've tried - some of which have already become well established in our repertoire - I can recommend the book very warmly. It is featured in the April issue of Country Living magazine, and Misa is offering a £5 discount on the book with the code COUNTRYLIVING5. To whet your appetite, try her Rhubarb and Almond Cake!

Doctor's orders

 

    Our most used cookery book in the last few weeks has been The Doctor's Kitchen by Dr. Rupy Aujla.

    I came across Dr. Rupy on Dr. Rangan Chatterjee's podcast* ; his episode is here, and in it he discussed the health issue of his own which inspired him to change (among other lifestyle factors) his diet, use food as medicine, and devise his own recipes. He practises what he now preaches to his patients, and his collection of 100 tasty, quick dishes - all of them using nutrient-dense ingredients for substance and flavour - is well worth looking out for.

    Among our favourites so far are Middle Eastern Mackerel with Green Hummus, Chestnut and Thyme Peas with Broccoli, Ginger and Carrot Oats (particularly good porage), and Persian Chicken Thighs with Roasted Carrots and Tahini Yoghurt.

    Dr. Rupy's Youtube channel will show you the sort of thing he does.

 

  *the source of much fascinating information, e.g. the latest episode on the gut-brain connection with the engaging nutritionist/neuroscientist Miguel Toribio-Mateas. 

Cookbook of the week - The Kitchen Diaries II

    Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries II has been put through its paces this week: there was the Bel Canto cake,

roast pork and rocket salad with lemon and olives, p.380 (wonderful),

a tart of leek and cheese, p.369 (very good indeed - I used a Circulon tin which ensured a crisp base),

and tomatoes baked with spices and coconut, p.390 - everyone agreed this was great and they want it again soon.

    But the pizza with mushroom, crème fraîche and mozzarella (p.407) got the thumbs down, unfortunately, with my testers preferring the recent Polpo versions. Polpo's dough is made with 00 flour, Nigel Slater's with strong white bread flour, and while the former gives a thinner, quite characterful crust, the latter is puffy and more nondescript; we weren't convinced by the topping, either.

    However, tonight we are having "the mother of all baked potatoes" - see p. 435 - and I have no doubt that honour will be restored.

Cookbook of the week - How to feed your friends with relish

    I said something the other day about cookery writers crediting their sources and recipes being passed on, and today's dish is a good example. This is Yogurt Cake with Pistachios from Joanna Weinberg's How to Feed Your Friends with Relish, but Joanna in turn takes it from The Moro Cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark (an earlier 'cookbook of the week' - see here and here, and by the way, I've made those flatbreads countless times since and we often have them with Monty Don's roast butternut squash salad).

    To get back to the cake, it's baked in a bain-marie and its consistency, Joanna says, should be a light sponge with wet custard underneath. It contains only a teaspoon of flour, and its substance comes from Greek yogurt and eggs, the yolks beaten with the yogurt, sugar and flavourings (vanilla and lemon) and the whites then beaten to the soft peak stage and folded in. After it has been cooking for ten minutes you sprinkle chopped pistachios on top and return to the oven to finish baking, and when done, leave it to come to room temperature before serving "scattered with torn rose petals" - ah!

    It's an unusual pudding cake, but the taste is good and it went down very well here, even without the rose decoration.

Cookbook of the week - How to Eat

 

    Cooking is a bit like a game of Pass the Parcel or Chinese Whispers, I think - recipes are handed on by one means or another, adapted according to taste or the ingredients available, their provenance sometimes acknowledged, otherwise unknown or forgotten. The chain of interpretation may be strong and clear and 'pure', then again it can be full of missing links, but if you like to know the sources of things, it's good when one cookery writer acknowledges his or her debt to another.

    So it is with this week's cookery book, Nigella's How To Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (and indeed next week's, of which more anon), and our featured dish Mushroom Ragoût. As with so many stew-y dishes, my pictures are less than wonderful, so we'll rely on Nigella's text instead:

    "This recipe for wild mushroom ragoût is adapted from a recipe in From Anna's Kitchen by Anna Thomas. I was sent it one year among many other books under review and was surprised to find myself utterly seduced by it. Any description undersells it: in America it would be described as a gourmet vegetarian cookbook. But it has none of the worthiness or pretentiousness which that might seem to suggest. It is fresh and alive and speaks directly and intimately to the reader. I could take so many recipes from it here, since I so often cook, if not exactly from it, then inspired by it (which is more telling)."

    She goes on to say that this ragoût is "a sort of woodsy stew, odoriferously autumnal", and indeed it is, and surprisingly 'meaty', too. If you have either book, do try it; if not, know that it contains fresh and wild or dried mushrooms, Marsala, red wine and vegetable stock, softened onion (both red and white), celery, garlic, thyme, bay and cayenne with flat-leaf parsley to finish, make it as you would a meat-based stew, and you won't go far wrong. Nigella suggests serving it with oven-cooked polenta "if you don't feel that's a bit too Notting-Hill-restaurant-circa-1995"; we didn't, so we did.

Cookbook of the week - Rhodes around Britain

 

    Off the shelf this week has come Gary Rhodes' Rhodes Around Britain, a book of (mostly) traditional British cookery, from which we've had one of his signature dishes, Smoked Haddock with Welsh Rarebit.

    You make a large quantity of the rarebit mixture (Cheddar cheese, milk, flour, breadcrumbs, whole eggs and yolks, mustard powder and Worcester sauce) so you can keep what you don't need today in the fridge or freezer for instant but superior cheese on toast at any time.

   

    For the dish itself, make a tomato salad with a good vinaigrette (yes, I used one of these), then cover the smoked haddock with the rarebit mixture and bake for a few minutes, finishing off under a hot grill or with a blow torch. The combination is a good one, and of course for those who don't eat fish, just have the very savoury rarebit on tomatoes on sourdough bread or similar.

Cookbook of the week - Tender Vol. I

    We're cooking with Nigel Slater again, but this week from his whopping Tender: Volume I, A cook and his vegetable patch. What you see here is a truly excellent cake, a real revelation: Beetroot Seed Cake. Now please, beetroot-haters, don't rush off; stay and hear more and perhaps I shall convince you to try it.

    "This tastes no more of beetroot than a carrot cake tastes of carrots, yet it has a similar warm earthiness to it. It is less sugary than most cakes and the scented icing I drizzle over it is purely optional," says Nigel.

    Some ingredients: cinnamon, sultanas, mixed seeds (I'd toast them first, next time), that marvellous grated beetroot ... it's quite scrumptious. As to the icing, Nigel suggests making it with lemon juice or orange flower water but I used rose water as that's what I had and I'd do so again.

    There were a lot of sceptical comments from my family as I was making this cake, but they had to eat their words in the end as they find they love it, and even the extremely anti-beetroot Mr. C. wants more of it, so if you have the book, do try the recipe.

Cookbook of the week - The Home Cookbook

    I've been using Monty and Sarah Don's The Home Cookbook this week (you may remember a few posts from it around the time of this one), and it's given us three suppers to enjoy: Pasta with Chard and Mushrooms, Potatoes with Bacon, Onion and Sage, and what you see above, the amazing Roast Butternut Squash Salad with Toasted Seeds.

    Cut the squash into chunks and roast with olive oil until soft and slightly charred round the edges, then serve with rocket, cubes of feta cheese, toasted sunflower, pumpkin, poppy and sesame seeds (or whatever the cupboard will yield), and a balsamic vinegar dressing. This got rave reviews from my tasters!

Cookbook of the week - no. 15, part 2

    Not something to do every day, but now and again, making fresh pasta is worth the time and effort. Mr. C. does it here, using Mary Contini's recipe from Dear Francesca, serving it with her tomato and ricotta sugo.

Cookbook of the week - Dear Francesca

    All Edinburgh will know Mary Contini, cookery writer and driving force (along with her husband Philip) behind the food and wine empire that is Valvona & Crolla. Her book Dear Francesca is an intimate combination of memoir and personal recipe collection - dishes of both Italian and Scots origin - written to her elder daughter Francesca by way of handing down her family's culinary heritage: "Treasure it," says Mary, "it's more precious than jewels".

 

    I've had the hardback edition shown here for ten years, and we consult it often, turning to Mary's clear instructions for all manner of dishes. This week we've had a main course (coming soon), and a delectable pudding, the Zabaglione Ice Cream pictured above. Given that Mary's family were well-known Italian/Scottish ice cream makers, who better to turn to on this subject and for this recipe which she says is her favourite.

    Six egg yolks, caster sugar, whipping cream, the seeds from a vanilla pod, the finely grated zest of an unwaxed lemon and a generous pouring of Marsala make this delicious and special, and the cause of much licking of spoons in the process.

    What to do with the six egg whites you now have left over? Get out your copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol.1 and make Ile Flottante, an unmoulded egg white soufflé floating in custard or a fruit coulis (ours was raspberry), dusted with pralin.

    Perfect puddings for feasting over the Easter weekend.

Cookbook of the week - Delia's Complete Cookery Course

    Down off the shelves this week has come Delia's Complete Cookery Course, a book that must feature in millions of kitchens across the land and be referred to constantly for both basic instructions and more elaborate recipes. I've had my copy since I was a teenager - I think it was the first cookery book I bought for myself - and it is still used often, as this week shows.

    No pictures of our first dish from it as stews are hard to capture looking attractive, but the Shin of Beef with Mushroom Dumplings tasted very good indeed and even got compliments from our resident stew-hater.

    We're on firmer ground with the cake pictured above: Date, Apple and Walnut Loaf, another no-nonsense piece of baking that works and pleases everyone.

     Anyone else have (and still use) that book, Delia's classic?

Cookbook of the week - Noma

    If you've read the blog for a while you may remember this post about the book Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine. I said there that it wasn't really a book for the home cook to use in the kitchen, and that stands, but just for fun we have now tried a recipe: René Redzepi's famous malt soil!!

    Click back to the earlier post and in the last picture, bottom right, you'll see what we were aiming at, though we went for the other version of it, the 'vegetable garden'. The recipe is here, and there's a helpful suggestion on substitutions here, but to cut a long story short it's a blend of different flours (we used chestnut as we couldn't get hazelnut), with a few other additions, made over two days and sieved so that the end result looks like rich loam or good compost.

    We had it at a fine tilth until Mr. C. decided to add some liquid to it to help the vegetables stay in place (talk about muddying things up), but that didn't affect the taste which I thought was nicely nutty - I really like this strange stuff - though Harriet described it as "burnt toast made into fine breadcrumbs".

    Anyway, I said we were having fun with this mad dish, and so as it was supposed to be a vegetable garden (and the 'crop' was better than the picture above suggests), we thought it should have some gardeners to tend it,

so out came the Sylvanians ...

    There was much hilarity in the kitchen.

Cookbook of the week - week 12, part 2

    Watercress and potato soup, from the March chapter of Elisabeth Luard's A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse. The recipe given is actually for sorrel and potato with the suggestion to substitute watercress if you have no sorrel to hand. It turned out velvety and peppery, and with that chlorophyll-rich vivid green (the picture above was taken before the addition of some double cream or crème fraîche, the one below after) it looked and tasted wonderful.

    The book is illustrated with great photographs by Clare Richardson but also with Elisabeth's own watercolours, some of which you can see here, so leafing through it is as much a pleasure as cooking from it.

Cookbook of the week - A Cook's Year ...

    Almond cookies with cardamom, "crisp, buttery little biscuits to dip into mid-morning coffee ...". In A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse by Elisabeth Luard this recipe features during the winter months, and as the cardamom adds such a note of almost gingery warmth to the finished biscuits, they are perfect for the colder time of the year, but I wouldn't pass them by whatever the weather.

    You're meant to grind the whole (unskinned) almonds yourself, and I'm sure that would give an interesting texture and an artisanal feel, but I had only ready ground almonds in the cupboard so that's what I used and no harm done, though I forgot the dusting of icing sugar at the end. Next time ...

Cookbook of the week - week 11, part 2

    I've made pesto many times but never gnocchi to go with it. Sarah Woodward's The Classic Mediterranean Cookbook gives straightforward instructions, and though this is not a quick process, it's a very satisfying way to spend a couple of hours, and the end result is certainly worth the time involved.

    The potatoes are boiled in their skins and then peeled and mashed with salt; flour is gradually worked in, and that's all there is to the dough - there was no egg in this recipe. Left to sit while you make the pesto - much pounding and crushing and that lovely bruised basil scent througout the house - the gnocchi need only a minute or two in boiling water, and they have a surprisingly subtle, delicate flavour which makes them a great foil for punchy taste and coarse texture of the pesto.