Kitchen Diaries: Asparagus and Lemon Risotto

I have never been able to list risotto making as one of my superpowers, but after this outing, I'm definitely going to have to update my CV.

Anyway, Nigel's Asparagus and Lemon Risotto (May 26) calls for arborio rice, but seeing as I only had a handful of vialone nano and full bag of carnaroli hanging about in the back of the cupboard (Yawn. Don’t I sound like the uncontrived foodie), there were to be no arguments on that Italian frontier. I also only had 200g of asparagus which is seemed like a crime to chop up into bits, but that amount worked out much better. I think 400g of asparagus for only 200g of rice would have been like having some rice flecked with asparagus.

Now let’s talk about quantities - for two people, one with a Viking appetite (well he’s Swedish), 200g was not going to be enough, especially for a main course, so I ingeniously upped this to 280g and added garlic steamed cod fillets on the side.

I also reduced the lemon to one, another ingenious decision because it would certainly have been far too lemony for our tastebuds, even when fillets of fish swam into the picture. I also used shallots instead of ordinary onions and these added a subtle sweetness, and chardonnay left over from the weekend’s heatwave.

Nigel recommends using a chicken stock over vegetable, saying it would be devoid of soul without the glutinous chickeness, and lack a silky texture, but I disagree. I used a rich vegetable stock, with a dark colour and deep flavour (in concentrated liquid form from S’bury’s Taste the Difference range), and the texture was by no means unrefined. One thing about the stock, though, I found Nigel’s recommended 1 litre was too much - I only got through about 750ml of the liquid.

Another thing, Nige does not go into risotto making technique much, so I adopted what I’ve seen done on the telly, and instead of adding just one ladle of stock at a time, I used a few generous ones at once, and that probably saved me from having an outbreak of risotto arm this morning.

foodnobody

Kitchen Diaries: Chicken and mustard seed and coconut milk

Wednesday night seems to call for chicken curry and I have most of the things Nigel suggests for “Chicken and mustard seed and coconut milk” (1st April, aka “A fragrant chicken supper”), apart from curry leaves. Obviously I’m not going to find them at 7.30pm in any Sainsburys.

Chicken browns, spices fry, my sister calls and the sauce simmers a little too close to black… But it’s a forgiving dish, I’m rough with quantities, use tomato puree for half the toms and dissolve coconut cream instead of using milk, but it’s still delicious. Subtle coconut, chunky onions and fragrant spices mean that I end up eating way too much and having to waddle upstairs with a glass of white.

Notes: Nigel’s offer of cooking an entire chicken this evening feels a little generous as I’m cooking for a lonely one, but I halve the recipe for 3 so that I get leftovers, and it seems to work fine. I also added a little sugar and black pepper at the end. I eat it with steamed edimamie on the side and they’re beautiful together.

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

R

Kitchen Diaries: A roasted chicken with new garlic and a fresh pea pilau

Having recently purchased this gorgeous book, I have been paging through it for days on end, obsessing over which recipe I was going to try first. It's been driving my husband crazy. Something chicken related seemed most likely, and I was planning on the chicken with mustard seed and coconut milk, but it was actually a roast chicken with a pea pilau (June 3) that materialised in the kitchen last night. 'A roast on a week night?' you might exclaim, as I’ve heard a work colleague politely enquire of a friend a while back, making out it is a little ambitious – crazy even - for a work consumed Londoner to contemplate.

Anyway, Nigel recommends just olive oil, salt and black pepper to season the bird, but I could not resist adding a few pinches of fresh thyme to the freshly ground spices, nor prevent plunging a few sprigs into the birds inner recess. I calculate the time it would take to cook seeing as my chicken was 200g lighter than the 1.5kg he recommends. My calculator says roughly 54 minutes in total. I whack it into the oven – breast side down, as instructed and start on the garlic.

New summer garlic was out of the question seeing as it's only April, anyway two whole heads of standard garlic sounded like a bit much, so I reduce this to one small head; separating the cloves and tossing these into a pan of boiling water before adding them to the roasting tin. I was a little heavy handed with the salt on the chicken and feel a little nervous about what this is going to taste like. I check my watch – Nigel says to turn over the bird for the last 20 minutes.

Five minutes before I need to turn it over, I check the bird. It's looking all golden and smelling divine. I shake the tin a bit to move the garlic, which look like they’re browning a bit too fast, burning even. Perhaps more garlic in the pan would have prevented this. I turn the chicken over and see the breasts are all delicious golden as well. A few minute later, feeling really pleased, I start on the pea pilau.

Nigel does not say what rice to use, but I’ve got a bag of basmati and measure out a cup. I cook the onions and add the cinnamon bark and cloves. I guess that just a few is best to prevent being overpowered by clove. I also add a sprinkling of turmeric for a hint of colour – I've grown up with pilau that has a hint of yellow and just had to do the same as my mum does. I boil up some frozen peas in readiness. After two minutes I realise the rice has absorbed all the water Nigel recommends and is starting to stick to the bottom of the pot. I end up adding two more cups of water, but still have a very sticky situation once the pilau is done. Smells fabulous, though.

The gravy was really easy to make. I didn't have any vermouth and substituted a glass an a half of white wine instead of two (I did not want too runny a gravy), and that worked well. Most of the garlic was charred through and only three fat cloves were squishable. Anyway, I think two whole heads would have been too garlicky for a week night.

The chicken was delicious, if not slightly dry on the legs and the thyme was a good idea in the end. The salt was perfect. Definitely one of the most stress free roasts I've ever made.

I purchased Nigel's Kitchen Diaries cheap through Cook the Books' Amazon store.
foodnobody

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: 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: Stir-fry for a spring day

Before even the crack of dawn is a twinkle in Saturday’s eye we’ll be heading off to Gatwick and this means I’m trying to run down fridge supplies. Today I am looking to Nigel to use up the best parts of a packet of mushrooms and spinach. The man does not disappoint.

A well put together index (multiple listings for each recipe) leads me straight to page 100 - March 29 in the Kitchen Diary and before leaving for work I realise that I only really need some lemongrass to try out “a stir-fry for a spring day”. On the way home I try a hit and run on Sainsburys. Can I manage to leave with only one purchase? I fall at the first hurdle and have to carry my scallops on the long walk of shame home.

Preparation is monkey work though. Chop all the stuff and chuck it in a really hot pan (I forgot about spring onions but they’d have added to fridge stocks anyway – and I don’t care that my mushrooms aren’t chestnut and that my chilli is the wrong colour). I worry I’m over cooking my slightly misshapen scallops because I thought it would all be more complex. And then I worry about the stir-fry because the scallops take longer than I’d anticipated…

But it’s all fine, white rice soaks up the extra soy from the stir-fry and the scallops’ sweetness and firmness goes well with the spinach and mushrooms. The “stir-fry for a spring day”, to be fair, isn’t a show stopper though and not really worth following a recipe for. It’s nice nonetheless, salty and smoky and would be a good supporting role to many a fresh and lemony dinner star. Perhaps I add too much soy but the lemongrass is overpowered and I suspect Nigel’s suggestion of a hot red chilli would have been better than my medium green one, it’s not hot at all. Maybe the spring onion was all important after all. I’m afraid that Nigel loses the battle for my Wednesday to a few showy griddled scallops.

R

Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own stir-fry for a spring day.

Kitchen Diaries: Chickpea & Sweet Potato Curry

It seems like substitution may also become a bit of a theme. Personally, I don't think that's a problem. I like to think that one doesn't always need to follow a recipe to the letter unless, of course, one is making pastry or mayonnaise in which case I, at least, do as I'm told.

A good case in point for not doing what I'm told however is Nigel's recipe for chickpea and sweet potato curry. I've made this on a number of occasions and it's always turned out well - as have variations on the theme.

The substitutions I made this evening, to no detrimental effect, were:

• Butternut squash instead of pumpkin (a rather significant ingredient, despite the recipe's title)
  
• Dried chilli flakes rather than fresh (I don't know about you, but cutting fresh chilli makes my skin burn and I'm not sufficiently suburban to own a pair of washing up gloves...)
• Tinned tomatoes and passata not 500g of fresh toms
• Tinned chickpeas rather than fresh (life being too short and all that)
  

I've also found that no harm comes to the curry if you play around with the spices. Whilst shelling cardamom seeds may be a slightly irritating exercise, cardamom is a fantastic spice so I added a few more than Nigel suggests.

And one final note on this recipe's flexiblity: if you're a committed carnivore, adding chopped lamb to the curry around the same time that you're frying the onions and garlic should satisfy.

With or without meat, what results from 20 minutes easy cooking is a delicately flavoured but robustly textured curry. My preference is to serve it with brown rice. And despite all the messing around that I do with the recipe, it is worth taking on board one piece of Nigel's advice: the curry definitely tastes better the next day.

Naomi. xx

Kitchen Diaries: Sausage and Lentil Stew

Though it's been an unseasonably warm March, I chose the recipe from January 30 - primarily because the ingredients were inexpensive, readily available, and it was easy to make after work.


It's doubtful the thought of expense crosses Nigel Slater's mind too often, any more than he cooks strategically to minimise washing up, but a good selection of reasonably priced recipes definitely makes or breaks a cookbook. Even if like me you're a lefty-liberal type who insists on free range sausages, I think the total spend on this dish is about six quid.


I suspect another thought that rarely crosses Nigel's mind is, 'Really, I should cut back on meat'. This recipe called for 350g of sausages (about five medium snags), plus 200g of salami - which was an entire Ficele, maybe 8 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. And this for two people. For lunch. Uh huh.

Guest and photographer Rowan was joining G and me, so I had intended to increase it by 50%. But it just looked silly. I realised how little I pay attention to amounts in cookbooks anymore (except for baking) and just go with what feels right. I halved the salami quantity, used two snags per person, and kept everything the same.

If I didn't love Nigel quite so much, I might also take issue with his instruction to cut the salami into 'fat matchsticks'. What does this mean? Baton-style 'matchstick' size, which would be an awfully big mouthful of salami? Or 'fat matchstick' like Nicole Kidman after an egg custard - still pretty bloody thin? My knife wasn't sharp enough for the latter, so I ended up with squat salami oblongs.


But true to his words, after half an hour of cooking, we had a beautifully hearty dish that looked as if it had simmered on the Aga all afternoon. I made mustardy mash to go with, rather than the rocket salad suggested - which might account for just how full I felt on less than a whole portion. On consultation with Oddbins, G brought home a fruity Rioja - the Campo Viejo Crianza. A true sausage wine.

E

Kitchen Diaries: Chicken with mushroom and lemongrass

Cooking from a recipe book is going to be hard. I say this because we often have to depend on Sainsbury's Locals. You have to go into these shops with an open mind - if you want anything specific for dinner you'll be disappointed. If you want seasonally pertinent over-packaged chocolate then you'll probably go home happy.

And so last night after the first pleasurable outdoor pint of 2007 on the Thames by Tower Bridge we decided to cook Nigel's Thai style chicken with mushrooms and lemongrass. The only Sainsbury's busting ingredients being lemongrass and thai basil. R was convinced lemongrass usually comes in so much plastic that there might have been a chance... ha. Turns out that Chalk Farm Sainsbury's Local doesn't even have chicken on a Sunday night (unless you want it packed with chicken tonight sauce). Basil and lemongrass obviously don't get shelf space, but if you want some 'Brunshettas' there's actually variety. It's going to be hard for our cook-the-books entries not to turn into rants against the utter crapness of Sainsbury's Locals. But we can improvise, this is real life after all.

Anyway, with some enforced substitution (turkey & some lemongrass paste from the fridge, cupboard lime leaves instead of basil/mint, onion as opposed to spring onions, plus some fridge neglected sugar snap peas) we whipped up dinner. Took 30 mins and that was mainly spent waiting for the brown rice to think about cooking. Actually it was very nice and very easy to cook, I'd forgotten how nicely turkey browns. I wouldn't leave your washing drying in the kitchen while you cook this though. R's flatmates made a good show of trying not to cough when the chilli went in, but the fish sauce cleared the kitchen.

We reckon: you don't need 3 chilli peppers, we had two and that was still pretty hot. Add in any veg you can or have a side of green something-or-other, ours felt rather meat heavy.

Chicken with Mushroom and Lemongrass - March 18th

N+R