La Recette du Jour

I am an habituée of tuiles, since they are my go-to solution for an excess of egg whites. So this recipe from Delicious Days held no terrors for me. I had 6 egg whites in the fridge from making a prune and Armagnac tart, so this was a good opportunity to try them.

The paste was a bit more solid than I normally make, so they were slightly thicker than usual, but still crispy. And flavouring them with lemon zest and powdered Earl Grey tea is an inspired touch. They had an exotic perfume, and made a nice change from plain ones. Tuiles make a great accompaniment to any creamy dessert. If you shape them over cups or small ramekins, you can use them as containers for a filling of your choice — or just a scoop or two of ice cream.

I took the opportunity of Steve being away to try this dish from Delicious Days — I knew he wouldn’t appreciate being served up a dinner consisting of a plate of tagliatelle with no sauce to speak of. Actually it’s a lot better than it sounds, and it can’t be faulted on the effort-versus-results front, as well as being very economical.

You simply boil your pasta and dress it with the zest and juice of a lime, some chilli flakes (I used my standby chilli sherry instead), plenty of black pepper and olive oil, and a splash of the cooking water to loosen it all up. Salad dressing, basically. Swill it around so all the strands are glossy with oil and sprinkled with specks of lime zest and pepper, add plenty of Parmesan, eat. Excellent stuff!

One of those days when it was late, I was tired, I had’t done any shopping. The weather didn’t seem summery enough to do my usual pasta and courgette dish, so I did a quick foodblogsearch and hit upon a blog I had not encountered before.

It looked promising, so I tried it and was pleased with the results — it’s one of those simple sauces that can be prepared in the time it takes the pasta to cook. So StuffyerBake is now in my feedreader and my blog roll.

I often cook courgettes like this as a side vegetable (though I hadn’t thought of adding chilli before, or indeed stirring them into pasta) — they are very nice with roast chicken or duck, or even a grilled steak. Usually I salt them after grating and leave in a colander with a weighted plate on top for half an hour before squeezing out the excess moisture, but this probably isn’t necessary unless the courgettes are really large. I didn’t salt them this time, but did raise the heat to boil off the water.
Recipe for Pasta with courgettes and chilli »

“Must-stop-baking-cakes,” I muttered to myself as I browsed the blog of this month’s partner for Taste & Create, Happy Cook of My Kitchen Treasures. I seem to have baked a lot of cakes recently, many of them from my T&C partners or other bloggers, and the effects on my waistline are noticeable.

It wasn’t easy though; there were quite a few sweet dishes I fancied trying, such as Apricot-Marzipan Bundles, or coffee-craisin-mascarpone loaf. Or moelleux au chocolat. Or raspberry financiers. Well, you get the picture. HC likes making panna cotta too, and I love panna cotta.

But still, I tore myself away and decided that since HC obviously knows what she’s talking about when it comes to Indian food, I would make Kadai Murgh. Excellent choice — we both really liked it, and scraped our plates clean. I served it with a Basmati rice pilau and some yoghurt — sadly no Geeta’s mango chutney, because our local Carrefour doesn’t stock it any more — most upsetting.

This dish is dead easy to make; you can do it in little more time than it takes to cook the rice. Mine doesn’t look quite like HC’s, because I couldn’t get any tandoori powder, so I had to make do with a spoonful of paprika and some ras-el-hanout. When I tasted it at the end of the cooking time, it was a bit too spicy for me, so I just added an extra spoonful of crème fraîche to tone it down. Definitely a keeper, so thanks HC!

Visit My Kitchen Treasures for the real recipe. Here I give my own way of making pilau rice; I’ve been doing it this way for years and it always produces rice that is not soggy or stuck together. Of course you can vary seasonings to suit yourself.

For two not very greedy people, take a glass or cup of about 220 ml capacity and fill it about 3/4 full with Basmati rice. Finely chop a small onion or a shallot or two, and crush a clove of garlic. Heat some vegetable oil in a pan with a tight-fitting lid. Soften the onion and garlic in it for a few minutes, then add the rice and stir to coat it with oil. Fill the glass to the top with cold water, pour into the pan, and stir once just to loosen anything that might have stuck. If you like your rice a bit more cooked than I do, you can add a little more water — a tablespoon or two. Season to taste: I use salt, pepper, two or three crushed cardamom pods, and a bay leaf. Sometimes I add crushed coriander seeds or cumin too. Put on the lid, turn down the heat to very low, and leave to cook completely undisturbed for 15 minutes. Do not take off the lid or stir!

At the end of this time you can take a peek; all the water should have been absorbed, and you can test the rice by eating a bit. If it’s done, turn off the heat and stir it up a bit in case it’s stuck to the bottom of the pan. It will keep warm with the lid on for another 10 minutes or so.

Well, I will never catch up with Maggie, because she has already done more recipes than there are in my whole book. But here I am with two recipes in two days.

Thank goodness for my Global knife, the best tool I’ve ever had for chopping vegetables. This recipe requires you to dice courgettes and aubergines to the size of grains of rice. I’m not the best chopper in the world, but with this knife I did it tolerably well in about 10 minutes.

The veg are sauteed and then added to a classic plain risotto, which is served with lamb cubes threaded onto rosemary twigs and pan-fried. Actually I grilled mine using my cast-iron grill pan, because it’s the best way of quickly cooking meat so that it’s caramelised on the outside and still pink on the inside.

It was nice; I liked the way the flavour of the tiny dice permeated the risotto. For a vegetarian version, it would be good with grilled halloumi cheese, which could also be threaded on skewers.

Time to pull my socks up and get on with my Cookbook Challenge — only a dozen done, and Maggie has raced ahead with 80-odd! This evening we ate papillottes of feta (or rather French imitation feta, which can no longer be called feta since it doesn’t come from Greece) baked in foil with spices (pepper, cumin, chopped chilli), herbs (oregano and garlic) and branches of cherry tomatoes, with a glug of good olive oil poured over the lot. Very nice — it makes a good vegetarian starter with some green salad and plenty of good bread to mop up the melted cheese and delicious juices. I can imagine cooking these on the barbecue at the height of summer.