Rachel Allen

OK, first things first – apologies for not updating sooner, but things have been a bit crazy this weekend. We started off by having my parents over for dinner on Friday night, and needed something quick as we were kind of caught off-guard. We decided to play it safe and go for something we had done before – Rachel Allen’s Thai Sticky Chicken.

Rachel is a favourite in our house. We had never even heard of her until my mother bought the Mrs her “Home Cooking” book for her birthday. We had a flick through the book together, and were pleased to find it is 330-page beefcake of a book, complete with basics in the back, some drinks recipes, and breakfasts and Sunday lunches (the favourite meal of the week in our house). I also have Rachel’s iPhone app. I can’t decide if I like her voice or not. The blurb in her book states that she is Irish. I expected a velvet Irish brogue of a voice. Instead, RA sounds like an English Victorian school governess. I can’t decide if I like it or not! Additionally, the “clap for next step” feature of the app picks up absolutely any noise and just doesn’t work.

The Mrs has also picked up Rachel Allen’s “Rachel’s favourite food at home” from the library this week, and is cooking the Chorizo and Feta Frittata, to be served with leeks and bacon from the same book (review to follow, but the Frittata looks and smells amazing).

Anyway, we cooked the tried and tested Thai Sticky Chicken for my parents. We knew it was a winner as my Mum had previously asked for the recipe – she’s not shy on speaking her mind! We served it with mash and sugar-snap peas – “traditional Thai accompaniments” my father took pleasure in pointing out. Maybe not, but it worked. The chicken was excellent, as always, if a touch on the spicy side for all diners (perfect for me!). A big thumbs up.

My better half also made Lemon Biscuits from the ‘favourite food at home’ book – these didn’t go so well. I have mentioned I am not baker on the last update, but these looked almost too simple to me. They were quite greasy, as wor lass put more butter in than the recipe specified, as the mixture was too crumbly and didn’t bound together. She did mention that she thought she might have over-melted the butter, but I really don’t think this was the case. Anyway, too much butter made the biscuits too greasy and diluted the already subtle taste that the lemon zest leant the recipe. However, Rachel’s tip of rolling the biscuits in a layer of cling film was great – much mess saved.

So – on to Saturday. This is where I have to ‘fess up. The real reason that I have not tested more this weekend is… we got a Marks and Spencer meal deal. And do you know what? I'm not going to apologise. It was delicious! We had chicken wrapped in bacon stuffed with Brie, and stuffed mushrooms. In addition to this, on Saturday we had a three course lunch at a local pub and didn’t even eat dinner. Sunday greeted us with roast lamb at my mothers. Combine all these factors with the release of Gran Turismo 5, and before you know it, very little cooking has been done.

Monday comes round and I feel guilty – time to test Rachel a bit more. I baked the Peanut Butter and Banana muffins last night, and was very impressed, although I may have cooked them a little too long as they were not overly moist. More successful bakery practice! In fact, the Mrs had a friend and her one year old over this morning. The girls loved the muffins, and the little lad, who cannot speak yet but had been learning baby-sign, repeatedly asked for another by signing more over and over! A genuine compliment – why would a baby pretend!?!

Rachel Allen – Home Cooking @ Amazon

Rachel Allen – Rachel’s Favourite Food at Home @ Amazon

Nigella Lawson’s Feast - Tropical Chocolate Cake

This weekend I found myself with some free time. I was working during the day, so Mrs Chef had taken Junior to stay with her parents. I can’t stand cooking for one, so what to do? How to update this page? Traffic isn’t going to improve unless I can update more.

The answer was obvious – bake a cake! I can’t remember the last time I baked. I’ve finished off cupcakes, as already mentioned, but not done any of the actual baking myself for so long. I looked through the books on Thursday evening and settled on Tropical Chocolate Cake from the feast book – mainly because I had a bottle of Malibu in the cupboard that had been untouched for over a year, some cream cheese that certainly would have gone off if it hadn’t been used, and desiccated coconut that had been hanging around for a while. I made the list of other ingredients that I needed, and used my lunch break on Friday to go shopping. This is where I first got stuck – the recipe calls for coconut essence – and not a single supermarket in town had any (well, not Waitrose or Sainsbury’s – and if they didn’t, there was no way Morrison’s would have. Tesco was too far, especially after already visiting two supermarkets during lunch). A colleague at work suggested using flavoured coffee syrup, but it was too late. It turns out Jane Asher sells coconut essence but paying £6.95 isn’t realistic – and it was obviously too late – but if you were desperate, and more organised, this is what I’d suggest. Instead, I plumped for malibu and vanilla essence.

So, I got home and made a start. First, I put all dry ingredients in a bowl. Problem one – we had no light brown sugar. I could’ve swore I saw it earlier but now it wasn't there. Of course, I’m a bloke – it didn’t matter, I’d use… Demerara! Nagging doubts were in my mind but I ploughed on. Until problem two reared its head. We had a tin of bicarbonate of soda, but it had less than a quarter of a teaspoon left in it. I was about to plough on and manage with the little powder remaining, but then I looked in the cupboard and saw it – light brown sugar. With a heavy heart, I binned the dry ingredients and went to Sainsbury’s for the bicarbonate of soda.

I got back and started again. Luckily this time all was well, and I made rapid progress on the two halves.

While the cakes were cooling, I decided to make my own dinner. While in Waitrose, I noticed a pack of diced Tuna steak that had been reduced. Brilliant, I’ll have that! Of course later I realised… what do you make with diced tuna steak. I always eat fresh tuna as a steak. After a while I went for burgers. I put:

- A small bunch of coriander

- A red chilli

- A teaspoon full of Ginger

- A couple of drops of Nam Pla

- The juice of a lime

- 2 cloves of Garlic

- And an egg yolk that I had left over from the icing (I prepared the ingredients in advance) in the blender, liquidized, then added the roughly chopped tuna and blitzed a while longer. I divided the mix into six balls and squashed into burgers, then griddled. These were pretty good, but I think the lime was a touch overpowering. Maybe I’ll just add half the juice next time.

Anyhow, by this time it was getting late, and the cakes were cooled. I followed the directions for the icing and whisked the ingrednients together over a saucepan of simmering water, then spread some of the resulting icing over the bottom half of the cake. In hindsight I should have been more generous here. Then I put the top half on top of the bottom – and watched in horror as the top split. No matter, I thought, the topping will cover it.

The topping was a like bright white sloppy marshmallow, that promptly fell into the crack, leaving a chasm that looked like a treacherous mountain pass after a snow storm. I disappointedly looked at the cake and compared it to Nigella’s work of art. Nigella, I let you down. I’m so sorry. I carried on attempting to ice, and then finished by scattering the coconut on top.

I was disappointed. I’d managed to make an ugly cake, that looked so beautiful in the book. However, I’m not Nigella, I don’t have a food photographer – and it turned out to be delicious! The cream cheese and pineapple made the sponge really moist, the topping tasted like the marshmallow it resembled, and the coconut gave an interesting texture. The cake itself wasn’t overly coconutty, despite the Malibu, but the pineapple was definitely there. For the first cake I can remember cooking since school, I was pretty happy!

Feast really is a great book. Its filled with recipes designed to satisfy large parties and gatherings and is beautifully written - Nigella lovingly devotes a large paragraph to each of the many recipes contained in the book. Definitely one I will be consulting again.

Nigella Lawson's Feast @ Amazon.co.uk

HO HO...HOW MUCH?!?!

As mentioned in the short paragraph ‘about me’ to the right, I have a kitchen cupboard full of various cookbooks. My family know I will always appreciate a cookbook gift – you can tell I enjoy my food just by looking at me! Its therefore inevitable that I will receive a cookbook for Christmas, as will the other half (if I no longer call myself Chef, is she still Mrs Chef?!).

The thing about the kind of books that you get for Christmas, the aggressively marketed celebrity endorsed cookbooks, is that they are not cheap upon first release! For example, Jamie Oliver’s latest, 30 minute meals has an RRP of £26.00, as does Nigella Lawson’s Kitchen. At first glance this seems ridiculous – I mean, lets be honest, if you divide the cost of the book by the occasions that you use it, does it really offer value for money?! It was my realisation that we had hundreds of pounds worth of recipe books that do not get used that inspired me to start writing the cookbook test lab. If we make more recipes from the books, we get better value for money out of each one. Simple.

The other obvious way to get better value for money from your books is to get them at the best price possible. I’m a Yorkshireman with Scottish blood – I like to think I’m getting a bargain.

There are numerous price comparison websites out there. I tend to use billybargain.co.uk. Yes, it sounds a bit silly and cheap, which surely doesn’t endear it to the stereotypical middleclass foodie, but should you buy the books above, it immediately finds them both for half price or under. Two presents for the price of one cannot be argued with. It can also be used for DVDs and games, amongst other items.

Another tool at your disposal, and a favourite of mine, is the ‘Red Laser’ app for use on the iPhone. Go into a shop, pick up an item, scan its barcode using the phone camera. The iPhone reads the barcode, recognises the item, and goes online to get the best price available.

Good luck with your shopping this year!

Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food - Salmon Tikka with Cucumber and Yoghurt dip

A productive weekend, during which we did nothing, left us with nothing to cook. We managed to have a night out on Saturday night, which left us prioritising Junior’s bath before food. We settled on a sausage sandwich for tea, and if truth be told the smell of frying onions motivated me to produce something for the blog.

After a few drinks on Saturday, I fancied something fresh and something curried! We decided on something simple, and consulted Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food. I had read, I can’t remember where, that ‘foodies’ tend to be a bit snobbish approaching this book. Its back to basics stuff – but it all just works, and it’s always tasty, if unspectacular. But that’s the thing: it’s not meant to be spectacular, it’s part of Jamie’s campaign to get families eating and cooking nutritious food, to remind the reader what their kitchen and themselves are capable of.

We settled on the Salmon Tikka with cucumber yoghurt. Not exactly a challenge, but I was tired and it ticked the boxes. To liven things up, I decided to serve with two varieties of Jamie’s rice – Spicy Chilli and Lime and Coriander. This is from the same section on rice as the Garlic and Nutmeg flavour I served alongside the Lamb Dopiaza below. I decided on the chilli rice as I had half a red chilli left over from making the Cucumber dip (the recipe specified one chilli, then in the method I was directed to use half – no mention was ever made of what to do with the other half!).

So, simple stuff. Make rice. Split into half, mix one half with Lime and Coriander, mix the other half with various spices, the remaining chilli and a touch of tomato puree in a frying pan. For the Salmon, apply Patak’s curry paste to the salmon fillets (if Jamie says using paste is good enough who am I to argue?!). Shallow fry. Serve with yoghurt dip on top of a Naan.

Verdict – more than the sum of its parts. While I enjoy making my own curry from scratch, Jamie’s right about the Patak’s range, its really tasty and time saving. In addition, Jamie’s tip for flavoured rice really adds something to a simple meal, and perks up a basic accompaniment to more of a star.

I’m going to end today’s update with a bit of an apology: I am sorry for the quality of my photography! I am taking photo’s on an iphone after I have finished cooking, and then treating on the iphone if appropriate. Please remember, I’m not a photographer, and I don’t have forever – it is my dinner, and I don’t want it to go cold!

Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food @ Amazon.co.uk

Video of Jamie producing the Salmon Tikka @ JamieOliver.com

Patak's paste range

Chef comes out! And Hairy Bikers Crumpets

I have decided to stop posting as Chef. It feels kind of like fraud to be honest. I am not a chef and never will be - my school work experience at a busy hotel kitchen put paid to that. Chefs cook for a living, and deliver dishes to spec and on time. I do it for fun. It doesn't matter if dinner is 30 minutes late in my kitchen!

Anyway, on to the actual recipe review. Just a quick one for today, the Hairy Bikers Family Cookbook - Mum's know Best! recipe for Crumpets. At first, I thought, "What's the point? They come in a pack, always have done", but gave it a go after buying the chefs rings.

The recipe calls for, amongst other things, full fat milk, yeast, bicarbonate of soda, strong bread flour, regular white flour, and time. The recipe directs you to leave the bread to prove. This is where I had my concerns. Whenever I have baked bread in the past, it failed, to be frank. Maybe the yeast was dead, I don't know. Anyway, we left it to prove and went out - and got back in around 6 hours later, having left the crumpets to prove about 4 hours too long. Whoops!

Luckily, the expected monster explosion of crumpet mixture in the airing cupboard did not appear, all looked good, so we mixed the bicarb in, let it prove again - and commenced cooking! The crumpets are made in the frying pan, not baked, so my fears where unfounded. I was also concerned about the milk - we don't have full fat milk, and buying some in just for crumpets kind of goes against my objectives of doing things on a budget where possible - so we used skimmed and added a bit of cream!

So, how did it go? OK, they're only crumpets, but they really were delicious! The biker's recipe blurb states "they're a million miles away from the shop-bought alternative". We didn't really think this was true, but they certainly were much better. Mum's did know best with this one!

Hairy Bikers Family Cookbook - Mum's know best! @ Amazon.co.uk

The Curry Secret

After reading Jonathan Davies blog urging his readers to support their local butchers, I was inspired to take a short walk into the small town centre. Pocklington is a small town that has two butchers, a fishmongers, an arts centre, two delicatessens, an award-winning tea shop, a coffee shop, Chinese and Italian restaurants, an old-fashioned sweet shop, numerous bakeries and cake shops, and a recently-opened ice-cream parlour to name a few of the options that draw local shoppers and food-lovers. It also has plenty of pubs to choose from!

We visited the local hardware store and got some crumpet rings and a blowtorch (more on that later!), then took a slow walk round before ending up at the butchers, WF Burtons. Burtons always has a long queue snaking outside the shop, and enjoys an excellent local reputation. I bought half a kilo of Lamb neck, the same weights again of diced venison and minced beef, four chicken, lemon and pepper burgers, a pheasant, a jar of Mango Chutney (the best I have ever tasted!), and a bottle of locally-produced Wolds apple juice (the Wolds always gets overlooked in favour of the Dales; the Wolds label on the juice certainly attracted me!). The total cost: about £19. The lamb on its own came to £1.74 – a bargain considering around 300g in Sainsburys is over £3.00. The last shop I visited was Atkinson’s Deli, a real Aladdin’s cave style food emporium selling everything from vegetables and eggs to cake decorating kit, a good selection of cheese and meats, tea (sold by weight), a very large selection of herbs and spices and all manor of tasty treats. I was surprised to see ‘make-your-own’ selection packs from Rafi’s Spice Box, a fantastic curry shop in York that sells every Indian ingredient that you could think of. All these are at fantastic prices.

Having said how good these stores are, not all in Pocklington are necessarily so good. Most of the shops in the town have a poster campaigning for the local shops. I think this is a good cause, but equally, shops aren’t necessarily superb just because they are local! Give the shops the benefit of the doubt but, just as anywhere else, if they don’t offer quality and value for money there is no real reason to go back.

I love a good curry, but this is something that I can’t get locally. There is a local Indian restaurant and takeaway but every time I’ve been, the food has been over-priced and bland. There is another not far down the road, but the food is hit-and-miss and the staff not very welcoming, so I decided to make my own authentic takeaway!

‘The Curry Secret’, by Kris Dhillon, was first published in 1989, and promises to share the closely-guarded secret recipes of the British Indian restaurant – not the authentic recipes that real Indian’s eat, but a good British curry. I first heard of the book from another forum I use often, and have had it for a while without using it. The Curry Secret is presented similarly to ‘The Curry Book’ – both old fashioned paperbacks without pictures, but TCB is a collection of slightly more authentic recipes than the TCS, whose aim is to reproduce the curry house experience.

The secret is simple – cook a base sauce, add the meat and adapt the recipe slightly for each different curry. The meats are all cooked in the same style as well – this is described at the beginning of the book. The idea is then to cook a massive batch of the sauce in advance and freeze it. I was making a one off Lamb Dopiaza, and it seemed like I was slaving over the sauce for ages. I didn’t feel good about it either – it was only at the last minute the curry visually came together, but when it did, it looked good and recognisable. The dopiaza is a basic mild curry with onions, something that both Mrs Chef and I could enjoy. The main ingredient of the base sauce is onions, with ginger, garlic and water, with tomatoes, oil and salt added later, along with chilli powder. I was very weepy by the time I had finished peeling the onions! The other spices you will need include Garam Masala, Cumin, Turmeric, Paprika and Fenugreek leaves. Once these have been bought they will last a long time when used like this. The lamb was cooked in a small amount of the base sauce, oil and cumin.

We served the Curry with a Garlic and Nutmeg rice from Jamie Oliver’s ‘Ministry of Food’ book, which Mrs. Chef handled. I really like this book – everything I have made from it has been good so far. To cook the rice, you par boil, then steam, then fry in butter, garlic, nutmeg and lemon, one of the four flavoured options. I think doing something with the rice made a big difference to the meal, rather than having plain boiled rice over and over again. We finished off with a Keema Naan from Sainsbury’s – there is really no point in making your own naan. Unless you have a tandoori oven, it will never be authentic.

So, how was it? The curry was good, but not excellent. It wasn’t as rich as a takeaway curry, which is alarming considering the amount of oil that I used when cooking. It was more like a takeaway curry than anything I had made before but still wasn’t quite there – but then the Dopiaza is quite a basic curry anyway. You can get The Curry Secret for 1p plus postage on amazon marketplace, so its got to be worth a go! The rice was great, a bit of a change that really added to the curry. The nutmeg was different and really went well.

One of the things I bought from the hardware store was a blowtorch, which was used to make Baked Alaska for desert. It was inspired by the Hairy Bikers ‘Mum Knows Best’ book but I made two individual Alaskas, using the only ice-cream we had – Praline Haagen-Daaz! I need more practise on the blowtorch though – the meringue burnt very quickly without cooking underneath.

Using the blowtorch was cool though – I had a Limp Bizkit song roaring in my mind as I was using it!

The Curry Secret @ Amazon

Jamie’s Ministry of Food @ Amazon

Hairy Biker’s @ Amazon

The Curry Book @ Amazon

The Hairy Bikers' Family Cookbook - Pan Haggerty

Despite describing myself as frustrated, realistically I know I’m quite lucky. I have been looking forward all day to Nigella’s Rocky Road, and my luck is still in. It really is delicious – very chocolaty, crunchy and gooey at the same time. I was disappointed when I opened my bag today to find I had forgotten my lunch, but this has really made up for it.

This evening for dinner, we are making use of another library book – ‘The Hairy Bikers Family Cookbook’. I like the Hairy Bikers. They seem friendly, funny and down-to-earth, and friends that have seen them live have heartily recommended them, so I was glad to see Mrs Chef bring it home. The lively duo have travelled the UK, collecting recipes from Mums across the country Each recipe has a quick introduction, name-checking the Mum it came from. I had a quick flick through the book and did fancy some of the recipes, although I thought the ‘cheese pie’ was a bit of a cop-out (Ingredients: Cheese and Mash. Method: Put hot mash in a tin. Top with grated cheese. Grill) but I guess from the Bikers’ point of view these are recipes that Mum’s genuinely use. Still, I wasn’t impressed considering the price of celebrity-chef endorsed cookbooks.

We decided on the Pan Haggerty last night when Mrs Chef declared that we had bacon to use in the fridge – she also had a busy day and this extract from the ‘Good simple suppers’ section fitted the bill. I got lucky again when Mrs Chef declared that she was to cook tonight, and I was to look after Chef Junior. It seemed to take a little while to cook, and Mrs Chef did confirm that everything took ages to chop. Her tip would be to use a food processor with chopper, or a mandolin.

This is where my luck ran out. Pan Haggerty is basically a watery mix of potatoes, bacon and carrots - topped with grilled cheese (déjà vu?). It definitely needed more bacon than the recipe called for, and by the time the potatoes were cooked, the carrots were like mush. I did have seconds, but that’s because I’m built like a Hairy Biker myself and was hungry. This is described as comfort food in the recipe. To me, comfort food is Lasagne or Macaroni Cheese. Pan Haggerty doesn’t come close.

I’m not writing off the book yet (I’m going to buy a blowtorch specially to do the Baked Alaska, and want to try the Curried Salmon), but the Pan Haggerty… As Geordie biker Simon might say, “Wor Pan Haggerty is proper shite man, and that”.

The Hairy Bikers Family Cookbook - Mum's know best at Amazon.co.uk

Nigella Lawson's Rocky Road Crunch Bars from Nigella Express

During Sunday’s disastrous cooking session, I remembered, with foreboding, that Mrs Chef had to make something to take to her Baby group this morning. At that point, I was not in the mood for cooking, but after a drink and a sleep, woke up revitalised. We both had a think, and realised that if the treats are taken to impress others, then Mrs Chef needed to bring out the big guns – only Nigella would do! We recalled that at a recent child's birthday party, the cupcakes we had made were mostly ignored in favour of Nigella’s Rocky Road… such a simple, effective answer. We don’t have ‘Nigella Express’, but did find the recipe online at lifestylefood.com.au here.

25 soft unsalted butter

300 g best quality Dark Chocolate broken into pieces

3 tablespoons Golden Syrup

200 g rich tea biscuits

100 g mini Marshmallows

2 teaspoons icing sugar to dust

I have to admit - I'm not Nigella's biggest fan. Thanks in part to Ulrika Jonsson's impression, she has become a bit of a caricature on television, uses extreme amounts of oil, butter and fat and I think she can be a bit pretentious. However, Mrs Chef loves her and I have to admit that her recipes to impress, and for sweet things that quickly make you fat if eaten often, cannot be beaten!

A very simple recipe – essentially melt the butter, chocolate and syrup. Add the majority of the mixture to the bashed up biscuits and the marshmallows, spread out in a tin, and then add the rest of the plain chocolate mixture to act as a top. Leave to cool. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

Of course, things didn’t go quite right. Mrs Chef made a start, before, inevitably, Chef Junior demanded her attention and I had to finish things off. I had to crush the biscuits, add the marshmallows and biscuits and then top. Easy enough, but in Nigella’s instructions she specifies how much mixture should be set aside for the topping. I tried to save on washing up and guestimated – and cocked it right up. Still, not the end of the world – Mrs Chef made up some more mixture and we get a nice, thick topping instead. An excellent collection of ingredients. Things looked great this morning, and I will let you know how they taste in the next post!

Nigella Express at Amazon.co.uk