I need to try this at some point:

CHILLI FETA

Serves 1-2 as a light snack

Ingredients

3 medium hot, red or orange chillies
2 spring onions – finely chopped
A little olive oil
200g feta cheese
a few sprigs of thyme
coriander – a large handful, roughly chopped

Turkish bread to serve

Directions

1. Halve the chillies lengthways, remove their seeds with the point of a knife and discard. If you like it hot, leave the seeds in.
2. Finely slice the chillies and the spring onions. Warm a thin layer of olive oil in a shallow pan, add the chillies and spring onions and leave to soften over a gentle heat, stirring from time to time.
3. Remove the leaves from the thyme, chop roughly then stir in the chillies. Put the lump of feta in the pan, spoon a little of the chillies, spring onions and thyme over the cheese and leave for a few minutes until the cheese is warm and starting to soften around the edges.
4. Add the chopped coriander leaves then sandwich pieces of the cheese and its seasonings in between pieces of bread.

Angela Hartnett’s crab linguine recipe

I made this for lunch but I didn’t have any linguine so I used fusilli instead. I also used the brown crab meat in the sauce to add loads more crabby flavour.

I’d made this citrus grape cake once before. That time I found it a little greasy. This time I replaced 25ml of the extra virgin olive oil with orange juice, to replace the flavour of the orange peel (I didn’t have any fresh oranges). I thought it worked well although Mr W tells me it was a risk to alter the amount of fat in baking and that he preferred the original recipe.

I used this Courgette and lemon risotto but used petit pois (cut weight by a third) instead of courgette. It turned out pretty well, but the courgettes and petit pois need throwing in close to the end, the amount of parmesan needed cutting by about a third as it was quite salty and it was better for an extra dollop of creme fraiche.

25 April 2012
Made again using 2 courgettes and petit pois to make the weight up to 400g again (not 600) and grana padano instead of parmesan. You do need the full amount of cheese but serve a third of it separately (Mark added more after I only used 2/3 of the cheese in the risotto). I really like this recipe but Mark is not keen on the creme fraiche, so I may substitute double cream for that next time.

In future I think I will try Jamie Oliver’s risotto recipe as I was inspired by the ones he made on Jamie Does Venice. I’ve only been able to find this Jamie Oliver risotto recipe online though.

Ken Hom’s pad thai recipe

I’ve used this recipe a couple of times now. Last time I used Amoy chilli noodles, the type that are supposed to be ‘straight to wok’ but it is better to put that type of noodle in a bowl and cover with boiling water to let them untangle without and get a bit softer. I also added some cooked beaten egg and tiger prawns when I had them to hand. I find it easier to cook the egg at least a little before adding, otherwise it gets lost in the mix during the stir-frying. The beansprouts can be (partly) replaced with other stirfry veg, although then the dish becomes more of a general stir-fry than a pad thai. I find that beansprouts do start smelling a bit unappetising after even a short time in the fridge so they are best used on the day of purchase.

The dish doesn’t need any salt; the fish, oyster and soy sauces are enough. For expedience it is useful to measure out all the ingredients before starting to cook and grouping all the ones that go in together into the same container to throw in all at once at the appropriate time. Also, it is important to check the best before dates on these packs of ‘ready to wok’ noodles as the oil coating them goes rancid eventually. It smells plastic-y and is very unpleasant.

I’ve used this recipe: Delia’s gnocci a few times now. It’s ok, but you only need half the egg specified. If you use all the eggs you have to add loads of flour, which dilutes the potato taste. Also, the gnocci have very little taste anyway and they are quite fat so taste a bit boring, even in a sauce. They need plenty of seasoning before rolling out and cutting, and possibly some internal flavouring. Paprika perhaps. Or cheese. Or both…

I used a pack of ‘stewing lamb’ I bought from Makro. They looked like four sections of neck fillet from the outside but when I opened it I discovered it wasn’t boned. So it was a bit of a pain pulling the meat off the bones and cutting it into chunks after it had been cooked.

Anyway, Moroccan lamb with apricots, almonds & mint is really good. Growing up, I never liked savoury food with sweet flavours. I suppose this was because I’d not had that flavour combo it at home. Having said that my mum does make dahl soup with a small amount jaggery in it

Used a tip from How To Cook Without Recipes: laid kitchen roll over the surface after cooking to soak up the fat floating on the top. Worked a treat.

Made couscous according to directions on the packet (from Waitrose) and it was perfect:
Allow approximately 45g of couscous per 80g serving. Place 250g of couscous in a large bowl with 400ml boiling water and 1tbsp oil. Stir, cover and stand for 5 minutes. Stir to separate before serving.

25 Feb 2013

Made this today using lamb neck fillet, with the oven at 150C. I cooked it for an hour with the lid on then half an hour with the lid off. The taste was fine but not all of the lamb pieces were meltingly soft; some were slightly chewy. I’m not sure whether this was down to the cooking time (Nigel Slater cooks neck fillet at 180C for only an hour) or that I put the lamb in with the orange juice before adding the stock or whether it’s just the meat. I have to admit that the meat wasn’t all defrosted to the same extent before cooking. Still, next time I will add the orange juice after the stock so the lamb doesn’t come into contact with it undiluted.

I also did some couscous from Sainsburys. The packet said to use less water than the Waitrose method but since the Waitrose method hasn’t ever let me down I followed that. But the couscous turned out soggy. Perhaps all couscous isn’t created equal and the packet instructions should be adhered to? Anyway, the lesson I learned there was to alway err on the side of less water since you can always add more.

Most of the Indian cooking I do is based on my mum’s recipes. The problem is that they are guidelines rather than recipes so I don’t get consistently good results. Besides, I’ve eaten my mum’s food for most of my life. It’s time I tried something a bit different. I found some easy Indian recipes by Atul Kochar. I made his coconut fish curry and home-style lentils and sauteed some sprouts in an Indian style.

18 Oct 2012
Curried sprouts
Remove outer leaves of sprouts as usual, then parboil until they are about a minute away from becoming tender. Drain off, and when they are cool enough to handle, cut each sprout into 1-2mm thick slices. Take a non-stick pan with a lid and pop some mustard seeds in oil, then add tumeric, chilli, garlic and ginger paste. Stirfry the slice sprouts in this tempering, adding a little water to help with coating properly. Add salt to taste and knob of butter.

Usually onion soup is made with a dark stock such as beef, but the recipe I used called for chicken stock.

The recipe was from this book: