La Recette du Jour

I adapted this recipe from one on WorldWide Recipes. I used goat’s cheese but you could use any other tasty soft cheese — Reblochon for example. It makes a good, simple vegetarian main course, served with green veg or a salad.
Recipe for Potato, tomato and cheese gratin »

These, from my Delicious Days cookbook, were fabulous. The ultimate test — how quickly they were snaffled at choir rehearsal, and how many people asked me for the recipe.

Mind you they should be good: 200 g each of dark chocolate and butter, 250 g of sugar, and 5 eggs! To be fair this did make 18 little cakes. The mixture is an almost flourless sponge (just 3 tbs of flour) and is intensely chocolatey. Nicky ices them with white chocolate and a sprinkle of chopped pistachios. I didn’t get a chance to do this with most of them (they were eaten too quickly) but in the interests of research I tried it with one of the two that I had saved for photography. I think they are better without: they have a very thin slightly crackly crust over the melting interior which is swamped by the icing.

You can make this as one large cake too, in which case it would make a special dinner party dessert served just warm with a pool of chilled crème anglaise or a small scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Oops. I chose this chicken dsh from my Taste & Create partner this month, High on the Hog. Unfortunately when I looked at the recipe more closely, I realised she had specified chicken breasts with skin and ribs, and all I had were a couple of thin, anaemic chicken supremes. Not only that, but with it being February my tomatoes were not the best (normally I boycott fresh tomatoes between October and May, but I made an exception for this).

I’d been attracted to the recipe because it included lots of lemon, and I was shocked by Temperance saying she wasn’t a fan of lemon and meat. How can anyone not be a fan of lemons with practically anything, I wondered? So I persisted.

As you can see from the photo, skinless chicken is not a good choice for this dish It was good anyway, but would have been better with crispy skin and juicier chicken. It’s very similar to the Catalan way I do fish, so you could certainly substitute firm white fish of your choice (or swordfish or tuna) for the chicken.

I think next time I would slice the potatoes rather than dicing them, so they’d cook more evenly — maybe my cubes were too big, but I had to cook them for longer than specified. I gave the chicken less time, because the pieces really were so thin, and I didn’t want them to dry out.

My second challenge in two days! These were easy to do, although you have to leave them to marinate for several hours, preferable overnight. I poached the peeled and quartered pears in a light syrup flavoured with lime, vanilla, and saffron, then carefully put the pears in a jar, poured over the syrup, and left them to soak before serving with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and tuiles (sadly not home-made — it’s been a long time since I was able to take advantage of a rainy Sunday afternoon, nothing in particular to do, and a surplus of egg whites).

This is a light, subtly flavoured dessert which would be nice after a rich main course (like the tipsy duck we had yesterday for example). It would be an excellent idea if you had a glut of pears — although the pears aren’t really “preserved”, I imagine they would keep for at least a week in the fridge, and only improve in flavour.

I decided to get serious with my cookbook challenge and try one of the fancier recipes. After a hard day in front of the computer it was quite therapeutic doing all the slicing, stirring, and sieving required by this recipe. Don’t be misled by the photo — it was really delicious, and it’s only my photography skills that are at fault, not my cooking ability.

The recipe is an interesting fusion of European and Asian ideas. The duck skin and meat are cooked separately, with the skin being diced and fried till crispy, and the breast itself poached in a rich red wine broth flavoured with oranges, onions, and balsamic vinegar. It’s then served on a bed of stir-fried leeks and carrots, with the reduced broth poured over and the diced crispy skin scattered on top.

It was quite fiddly to do, but the sauce was fabulous, with a wonderful depth of flavour, and I liked the contrast with the crunchy veg. The duck was nice and moist because of the poaching and resting. I didn’t get my bits of skin quite crisp enough — next time I’ll fry them more slowly to render more of the fat, before raising the heat to crisp them. I think Chinese noodles would have been nice too, to soak up the sauce.

Not a dish for every day, but great for a special occasion. Bonus — we now have a jar of rendered duck fat for frying potatoes.

Inspiration struck when I found myself with a piece of pork roast and a vegetable rack with practically nothing in it except four large leeks.

The result was excellent, though I say it myself. I also managed to find an inspired use for the leftovers, something a bit different from normal (see recipe). Pork is not expensive and we got two good meals out of this, so it definitely counts as frugal food.
Recipe for Braised pork with leek and mustard sauce »

One more recipe for the cookbook challenge. I had just one question about this: would it be as good as Rossella’s fabulous pear and gorgonzola risotto? Answer: not quite. It’s a plain risotto with gorgonzola and parmesan melted into it and a garnish of fried onions and apples. We felt there wasn’t really enough gorgonzola, but I liked the slight crunch of the apples in contrast to the creamy rice. Nicky managed to take a presentable photo of hers; I tried, but I can’t say the same. Well, I’ve already established that risotto is not photogenic!