Stuffed Courgettes - Yotam Ottolenghi

Recipe Rating: ** 2 Star

Ok, so I had some courgettes and wanted to do something a little bit different so I came across this recipe (see online version); it's in his Plenty recipe book.  He says it's a sort of Turkish recipe, and looked quite different and interesting.

 The ingredients were:

Stuffed Courgettes

1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
110g rice
 2 tbsp currants
1 tbsp pine nuts
2 tbsp parsley
half tsp allspice
quarter tsp cinnamon
quarter tsp ground cloves
half tsp dried mint
3 courgettes
3 tbsp lemon juice
180ml boiling water
1 and a half tbsp sugar

Here's the audio:



The recipe worked in that the cooking timing was perfect, the rice was just right and a tiny bit crunchy on top.  Trouble was, I didn't actually like the flavour!  It was a bit far-out for me, it was more like having a pudding and I wasn't convinced that it went with the parsley or the courgettes. On it's own the rice mixture was really tasty, and I think it would have gone really well with some pork or something.  But Plenty is a vegetarian cookbook so I suppose that wasn't an option!

I think the reason I didn't like this was mainly down to personal preference, it was simply not my kind of thing.  If you try it though, let me know how you get on - I'm really curious.

Pregnant Jool's Pasta - Jamie Oliver 30 Minute Meals

Recipe Rating - ***** 5 star!!

This was the first recipe I had made from Jamie's 30 Minute Meals book (recipe online too and a there's also a video of Jamie cooking it).  I had heard mixed things so I didn't have high hopes but it was grrrreat.  Very tasty - definitely going to be cooking this one next time I have a crowd to feed.  The way it's written is a bit different, so the recipe is for a whole meal to feed 6 people, including pudding.  So this meal is a pasta dish, with a salad on the side and little bakewell tart-like things for pudding.

He splits up the ingredients into what is used for each different dish which means some things come up a few times, so I've just written the ingredients below in the normal way because I found it a little confusing - made it tricky to do the shopping list!

The actual recipe is written in the order of what you do and it is step by step which is perfect for me.  So he tells you to do things like turn on the frying pan when you need to etc. This works really well, provided things take you the same amount of time as it would Jamie.  With me, my pasta took a little longer than expected which meant I was at a loose end for a few minutes, but it really did seem to work pretty well.

Jool's Pregnant Pasta

So here are the ingredients you need:
      (brace yourself, there are quite a lot....)

4 spring onions
1 carrot
1 celery stick
1 or 2 red chillies
6 sausages
1 tsp fennel seeds
 1 tsp dried oregano
500g penne pasta
4 garlic cloves
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tin chopped tomatoes (400g)
few fresh basil leaves for serving
2 red chicory (i didn't have this so used radish's instead)
100g rocket and watercress salad (from supermarket)
Parmesan cheese for serving

1 lemon
6 pre-made deep small pastry cases (I couldn't find any of these so I made the pastry cases from scratch myself, luckily it was the weekend so I was able to do this!)
1 egg
100g ground almonds
100g butter
90g caster sugar 1 orange 1tbsp vanilla extract
Half-jar of raspberry jam
200g creme fraiche

Here's the audio recipe:



The recipe took me 45 minutes to make rather than 30 minutes, and I was going as quickly as I could - I was super-organised beforehand so I had all the equipment I needed ready to go. So if I were you, I'd leave an hour to make this one. Still pretty quick considering how nice it is.

The meal worked really well, all of the flavours combined perfectly - one thing I would say, is make sure you have all of the flavours in there (fennel seeds, loadsa garlic), this isn't a recipe that works with things missing.  The puds were nice and easy and super tasty.  It was all pretty easy to make actually.  I absolutely LOVED putting the sausages in the blender, that bit was fun :-).

Hope you like it too!

King Prawns in Coconut Curry Sauce

Recipe Rating: **** 4 star

I cooked this one as a weekday evening meal, although it did take a fair bit of work to do.  The reason I chose to cook this one was because I had some prawns that needed eating up and everything else was pretty much store-cupboard ingredients.  The recipe is from a book I have called Curry which is really good (see Curry Cookbook).

So the ingredients I used were:

200 g king prawns
100 ml thick coconut milk
1 cm piece of fresh root ginger
2 cloves of garlic
2 onions
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 bay leaf
2 tsp ground cumin
1 green chilli
2 green cardamom pods, seeds ground with a mortar
1/2 tbsp butter
4 small new potatoes [- not in the recipe but I added them to bulk it out]
160 g basmati rice

The cooking went pretty well, it took me a while - you'll notice the audio lasts 45 minutes - but that's how long it took for the entire process, peeling onions right through to food on the table.  The food was almost a little too tasty - I had a couple of mouthfuls of chilli which completely zonked my taste buds!  So I avoided the chilli when eating the dish, but by the end I decided it was a bit bland without the chilli.

The addition of the potatoes did the job for the evening meal, it made it more filling and meant I didn't need as many prawns.  But it was a little dry so I might try without the potato next time.  Definitely cook this another time though and I'll try to do it properly.

Here's the audio:

Meringues!

Recipe Rating: ***** 5 star

So at the weekend I decided that I would try to make meringues.  I had some strawberries and some cream so I thought it would be quite a fun thing to do for Wimbledon.  I had never made meringues before (I have no idea why not, just never happened).  So I found a recipe on the BBC food website which looked pretty good (Meringues).

I decided to use half quantities, these are the ingredients I used:

2 large egg whites
60 g caster sugar
60 g icing sugar

To make the meringues I needed baking paper/parchment, an electric whisk (although you could do it by hand if you have strong wrists), a baking tray, a mixing bowl and an oven.

The meringues when they were done were only just brown on the outside, they were gooey in the middle and were really tasty.  They went really well with the strawberries and cream, and they were pretty easy to make.  I definitely recommend this one!

Attached is the link to the audio - let me know what you think.

Ever covered your ipad in flour...?

Hello to all fellow cooks!
    or food lovers who fear cooking...
    or proper chefs who cringe in horror at my cooking methods....
    or food haters who have yet to be converted! 

Welcome to my little experiment - please feed back and tell me how it is going, because I have absolutely no idea.  And it would be great to hear from you.  So here's my hypothesis...

I like to cook from recipe books - they're great for new ideas.  Unfortunately I get a lot of my recipes off the internet, not all, but quite a few, and my computer doesn't really feel at home in the kitchen.  It complains when it gets covered in flour, or grease, or sugar...  So I wanted to test the hypothesis that a 'talking recipe' played in real-time whilst cooking might be an alternative medium for the modern cook.

On this blog, each time I try a new recipe I will upload an audio commentary and I will do my best to describe what I'm doing sufficiently well for you to follow it, I'll also include the recipe details in the blog for you to refer to.  Through this process I hope that it will be possible for people to create the food without needing to press a laptop button or turn the page of a recipe book, or an e-reader!  I will also review the recipes and tell you what I think of them and hopefully you'll be able to get an idea of how easy they are to do from the length of the audio file.

So that's my plan - if you try any of the recipe's please let me know how you get on.  And if you have any advice as to how I can make it easier to follow just say.

Thanks!  Enjoy the cooking :)