Kitchen Diaries: Double Ginger Cake

It's spring, and there are good seasonal ingredients again! After last night's warm salad of Jersey Royals, asparagus and bacon with the world's faffiest artichokes, we were in need of a little extra somethin'. No chocolate or cream in the house to lift those pears in the fruit bowl out of obscurity, so we embarked on making a cake.

(Ok. So all my posts are about cake. Even the salmon was in cake form. I might have certain... proclivities. )

Yes, a cake. Listening to Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, I hauled the multitude of ingredients out of the store cupboard to make this near-perfect ginger cake. It's one of my favourites in the book - especially because I've never, never had all the ingredients it calls for in the right quantity, and substitutions never seem to ruin it.

In the past I've had to use plain caster sugar instead of dark muscovado, marmalade for the syrup, and possibly some dried apricots for the sultanas. It always tastes just as good. This time, a little treacle is required.

I think its advantage is that you don't need to cream the butter and sugar at the start. By melting the wet ingredients together, the whole thing seems a lot more incorporated and smooth - this must maximise air bubbles that give it such a beautiful lightness.

The top of the cake crisps to add seductive bite. I can only suggest you try a sizeable square, warm from the oven, with a dollop of freshly whipped cream on the top for a completely erotic experience.

But like the best lovers, this cake is still good the next day. Ok, the crispy edge has gone and its perfume isn't as strong, but it's mighty fine with a cup of tea in a sunbeam.

Please, make a date with this pudding. And get a whole bunch more by buying Nigel's Kitchen Diaries through our Amazon store. Now available in paperback for the weak-limbed!

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Kitchen Diaries: Mustard Chops

There aren’t many great shops in the areas I shop, so it’s doubly annoying that the few there are shut at the time I’m leaving work across town. This leaves the palace of Mr Sainsbury’s glittering delights responsible for filling my sorry cupboards.

As I leave for work this morning, I flick through the Kitchen Diaries and go for Mustard Chops – it’s just garlic, lemon, grain mustard, olive oil and lamb chops. But this evening there is no lamb whatsoever in Sainsburys. I decide not to be meatist and go for pork instead.

It’s a kids play recipe, bash the ingredients into a marinade, leave the meat in it for a bit, and cook. Nigel says grill, I read barbeque! We have it with bbq veg in pesto couscous and announce the beginning of summer.

If you'd like to, you can buy Nigel's Kitchen Diaries cheap through our Amazon store.

Kitchen Diaries: Salmon and Dill Fishcakes

This weekend's magnificent sunshine got me racing ahead to the summer months of the book, so here's one from May10. Much as I wanted to put the barbecue on at 10 in the morning and add sausages to it every hour on the hour, the reduced salmon fillets from Morrison's needed using up.

I instantly loved the idea of these fishcakes without the glutinous potato that in my hands often ends up a sloppy, greasy mess, rather than a light crisp shell. (Back in my student days, I used to make fishcakes with a tin of tuna and some Smash. There's an admission.)

I chop the fish in a large-ish dice to avoid cakes that are too uniform in texture - like those frozen Thai ones you get in cheapie restaurants, which could be any number of fish reduced to a paste and then fried.

There's not much dill in the fridge, so I mix in some chopped parsley. The mustard available is a fiestier Dijon, as opposed to the wholegrain in the recipe. The effect is probably a tad less delicate, but zingier. It's not a delicate lemon sole we're cooking - the salmon can handle it.

I'm in a hurry - the effect of pregnancy being a jump from zero to ravenous in 2.4 seconds. So I skip the cake forming and resting step, just spooning the fish directly into the pan like drop scones. They're fine. Just watch the temperature, so they don't burn before they're cooked in the middle - and don't skimp on the oil.

A few lettuce leaves and some thinly sliced fennel partner what are surprisingly rich fishcakes. The yoghurt with more dill, parsley and mustard cuts the richness, as does plenty of freshly squeezed lemon. Out in the garden with the Sunday papers, it smells of lemons, fresh fish, and coconut sunblock - just like being on holiday.

You can buy Nigel's Kitchen Diaries cheap through our Amazon store.

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Kitchen Diaries: Chickpeas with harissa, basil and ham

The warmest day of the year so far and I briefly venture out from my weekend of splendid isolation in flip flops, their first wear of the year. After a day of working and listening to mentally bad jazz I go for May 4's "Chickpeas with harissa, basil and ham". Light and tasty and warm, I hope.

Toms and aubergines are roasted in olive oil, red wine vinegar and cumin seeds for an hour. A tin of chickpeas, a harissa dressing, basil and crisped prosciutto (or, for me, some random cured French meat bought on holiday) are added.

Sounds great... Did I get the amounts wrong? Were my tomatoes too small? Did I misread Nigel's careful instructions? They sounded easy enough. Far too many chickpeas and veg on the oily side did benefit from my addition of lemon juice, but somehow I was left entirely cold. Where was the cumin? Where was the jazz? Perhaps I mistook a support act for a headliner, who knows. Anyway, Nig, you're one down.

You can buy Nigel's Kitchen Diaries cheap through our Amazon store.

R

Kitchen Diaries: Roast chicken wings with lemon and cracked pepper

My self-imposed finishing book deadline looms heavily on the horizon and I have a compulsory weekend of anti-sociability to try and make headway. But I write lists of other things to do, I try to make easter eggs, I think about cleaning the garden and wonder whether my CDs need reorganising. I decide on something easy for diner and for some reason, the sunny day, the need for comfort food, I settle on "Roast chicken wings with lemon and cracked pepper" (April 26).

The chicken wings at the supermarket look so pathetic, 12 bits of skin and bone squashed in together for £1.89 (how can that be financially viable?), that I can't bring myself to buy them and go for infinitely happier looking drumsticks. There are still no bay leaves in stock and the smell of a middle class uprising lingers around Camden Sainsburys herb section.

I squeeze lemons and crack pepper corns and mix olive oil and chuck the chicken in the oven to sit down and get sucked into About Schmidt. 45 mins later they're lemon fresh and peppery hot and roast chicken gooey. Cosy and pretty much perfect for a lonely Saturday night in an empty house. Nigel wins again.

Kitchen Diaries: Roast Pork With Lemon And Potatoes

My favourite style of cooking is the archetypal lazy bloke method – shove a load of meat and vegetables in a pan, with some other tasty bits and pieces, apply heat and some minimal supervision. The key is the choice of ingredients: not too many, keep it simple stupid, etc. This is a great meal for that: potatoes not even parboiled or peeled, just cut in half and thrown in along with some lemon wedges and fennel seeds. I didn't even know what fennel seeds looked like before yesterday but fortunately A (my better half) is working through a mild fennel obsession so we had some handy. Anyway, preparation time about two minutes. Top stuff.

I actually cooked it for half an hour longer than recommended, due to the roast being a bit slow to cook through (our oven isn't great), but it didn't seem to do any harm. Normally I'd parboil potatoes before roasting but these little new potatoes came out with a perfect texture: just the right amount of waxy resistance, and flavoured beautifully. I'd be tempted to do more than the recipe suggests just because they're so great and work well in salads the next day.

The fennel flavours the potatoes and lemons very nicely, but not so much the meat, as it's not swimming in the fennelly lemon juice. The recipe states that basting the pork isn't necessary but I'd actually recommend it as the flavouring on the pork by the end was perhaps a little on the subtle side, and though the juices left over made a fantastic gravy some could have been spared for the meat.

I ate the lemons as well. I wouldn't recommend eating more than a quarter of a lemon's worth of chunks as they get a bit sour, although the texture is great. Mr Slater doesn't say whether eating the lemons is expected, but this sort of decision is best left to the eater: I liked them, A didn't. Maybe rather than eating them in big chunks they could be chopped up and put in a little bowl as a relish (with the uneaten going in a jar in the fridge).

By the way, the smell from this meal cooking is amazing – if you're lucky enough to have a big kitchen/dining room, make this for guests while they sit around chatting: they will be drooling in anticipation (put some kitchen roll down or something) as the rich lemony aroma pervades the kitchen.

Buy Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchenfor cheap from our Amazon store and make some of this very easy and tasty Roast Pork with Lemon and Potatoes for yourself.

Kitchen Diaries: A Fiery Way With Lamb

I have a rare lamb fancying moment on the tube home and invest in a small neck fillet, hoping that Nigel and my cupboard will lend me further inspiration. Happily, I have the lion’s share of things for “a fiery way with lamb” (March 11). It’s one of those meals he describes the idea of rather than directs, so I don’t worry about using puree and water instead of real toms and I reckon I’ll survive without coriander.

The frying whole spices (mustard, cumin, fennel and coriander) smell beautiful in our lonely kitchen and after the marinade’s done I leave my lamb cosily wrapped in it for an hour before grilling. Nigel uses chops and offers no cooking times, so mine (done for just under 10mins on each side) is a little over done unless you don’t like pink, then it’s perfect. I don’t think I reduced the tommys enough, they’re still pulpy and so blacken under the grill. But it’s fresh and hot and vibrant and the whole spices work considerable magic.

I have it with roast sweet potato and fennel, mushrooms and spinach (sweated with lemon and pepper, but they’re definitely the weakest link) and it works well together, good colours too. Once again Nigel wins my night, but took a little longer about wooing me than I’d hoped for.

You can buy Nigel's Kitchen Diaries cheap through our Amazon store.

Nigel Slater : Prawn and Coriander Rolls

We're just back from a skiing holiday which consisted of a week of only three things - looking intently at the ten feet immediately in front of you, sleeping and refuelling the body with food and wine. And so after a slightly depressing Sunday back in London (at least it was sunny) we planned some dinner. A quick trip to a proper Painsbury's (while I watched Noel Edmonds on Deal or No Deal - sadly not this clip) produced the required ingredients for prawn and coriander rolls. The only slightly odd ingredient being rice vinegar.

These proved to be absolutely delicious and very easy to make (although I mainly watched The Best of Top Gear during the cooking - the one where they make a soft top people carrier) .


Anyway, this was one of the most tasty things we've ever eaten. I think we might have discovered my new favourite thing - and we used the cheapest of the cheap and nasty prawns. The sauce was loaded with flavour, sharp with sweetness and some sour.

Things to watch out for: Not sure if this is meant to be a starter but we had to double the recommended amounts to get decent portions. We chopped the lettuce and had brown rice with it which worked very well. If you like coriander and strong flavours this will be your new favourite thing too.

Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own prawn and coriander rolls. Yummmy yummy in your tummy.

Kitchen Diaries: Lime Tart

We’ve got a few relationships which involve swapping desserts, and last night we went to one couple’s house for beef. Last time Sallie came 'round she made the most incredible blueberry cheesecake, so it was the perfect excuse to make Nigel's Lime Tart.

Nigel says it’s easy, but it’s rather a lot of work. I thought I’d be able to do it without a problem in the two hours between when we got back from a visit to Arundel Castle and when we were supposed to be at their house, but it took about two and a half hours to make and cook.

The pastry is very very delicate, like homemade sugar cookies without the baking soda, so it needs loads of resting time. It can’t be rolled, so it gets logged and sliced and pressed.

The lime innards are very eggy, reminding me of a Bakewell tart, and yes, they are easy to prepare, but it takes 45 minutes to bake. I bow my head in shame at my lack of reading ahead.

The crust Nigel says to prepare is extremely buttery, and takes at least 10 minutes longer to pre-bake (and become “dry to the touch”) than he recommends. By that point, the edges were browner than a discerning pie crust maker would like, and there was still another chunk of time in the oven with the insides. I had to rush through this part, which means that the tops were overly cooked and the crust’s insides were still too soggy to stand up on their own.

At least two cookbooks have assured me that pie crusts do not burn after being pre-baked. They both lie.

As for the tasting, the tart came after a particularly lovely pot roast and was a huge success. There were general calls for seconds all around. We practically licked the tin clean. It was a perfect mixture of custardy and sour. Very moist and not too gooey. Next time, and there will be a next time, I’ll plan ahead and clear my schedule for the afternoon.

Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own Lime Tart.

Kitchen Diaries: Sweet and sticky chicken wings

M was upstairs putting the finishing touches on his first (and last) schoolwork essay in a decade and our house was practically devoid of any foodstuffs. I’d discovered a couple of chicken wings in the freezer which I was glad I hadn’t thrown into the last pot of stock I made. Those plus the remaining tortellini from the night before (plus the leftover bacon from the haddock dinner a few nights ago) made a dinner-like meal.

I was really surprised to see chicken wings in Kitchen Diaries. It’s not normally a part of the bird people eat in the UK (although in the States they’re practically a staple). I liked the idea of sweet and sticky, calling to mind my favourite US treat, buffalo wings, and once again a quick rummage assured me I had all the ingredients. Marvellous.

This is preposterously simple recipe. It’s almost embarrassing: Honey + Mustard + Garlic. Mix n’ Pour. Shove in oven. Flip once. Remove and eat. Delicious. Really good. I wished I had more. I can now do this in my sleep.

Nigel admits that it’s not got any spice and I would have liked a bit of heat, so next time I’ll throw in some cayenne or a sliced up fresh chilli from the plant. Because I only made 4 wings, I didn’t need to put them in for quite as long as he suggests. I’d have liked a bit more gooeyness, but that could have been remedied by pulling them out about 10 minutes earlier.

Really good – and tasty. Unfortunately it comes with a price. The cleanup is an absolute ‘mare.


Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own sweet and sticky chicken wings.

Kitchen Diaries: Baked haddock with bacon and parsley

I OD’d on salmon late last year, and while I still love the fish I have tried to branch out into other sub-oceanic wonders recently. Haddock is one such foray. But, like Elvis, once I find a foodstuff I like I don’t wander too far off the rail. Sadly, I’m beginning to have my fill of this fish too.

But bonus, the last fillet in the fridge gave me the perfect excuse to nose around the new Sainsbury’s which opened last week to great fanfare within the Brighton community. Hey, we’ve got the Pier, we’ve got the Pavilion. We’ve got Gehry towers growing, and a virtual pier rising. We get excited about things.

The fish was blindingly simple, yet ridiculously easy to overcook on all (fish, bacon) accounts. It’s not got much in it other than the fish, the bacon and the parsley, and which I’m not a sauce-fanatic, it was a bit dry. The bacon and parsley element, for example, could have used a smidge of white wine or something to pad it out. Still, unfettered and - yes - tasty.

I’ve noticed Nigel’s not so keen on carbohydrate accompaniments to his dishes, and this one is no different. He recommends a watercress, pear and fennel salad to go with it, and if that hadn’t been there this would have been a “meh” – tasty, but not spectacular. The salad, however, was divine. I mean, really excellent.

I don’t experiment with my greens course very often, but this has inspired me to move away from the Romaine and cucumber and towards the spicier leaves, the sweeter fruits and fennel – oh, fennel. The dressing he recommends – a very simple lime and olive oil concoction – deserves another half a lime than he suggests, to give it a bit of ting, but this is what saved this meal. I’ll be visiting the salad many times again.

Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own baked haddock with bacon and parsley.