A recipe roundup
- rosemary
- Sep 23
- 6 min read
I'm feeling lazy so I'm just going to present a few recipes that caught my eye of late, and which I have been wondering how to fit into my blog writing rambles. Some of them have something further to say than just 'eat me'; some of them just want you to dive in and try; some of them are set to be passed on to my family members and friends who think they can't cook - they are wrong - and some of them either teach me something, or raise a whole lot of questions. After all everything in this world has something to say, and food has endless questions to ask - as Nigel said in his introduction to Tender Volume 1:
"And yes, it is worth 'reading' our plate before we tuck in. Where did this food come from? Does it sit comfortably with our conscience and what we believe good food to be? What, other than our immediate appetite, does it benefit, and crucially, what damage is that plate of food doing?'
Which is all a bit sententious and not really at all what I was aiming for when I started, however true.
No, what I wanted to do was encourage you to try to cook something new. A few years ago I think I made a resolution to cook something from a recipe at least once a week, and generally speaking I think I have, although definitely not quite. Maybe every two weeks? Give it a go anyway, because I think that as well as the obvious notion of experimentation and the human need for novelty, they might introduce you to a new way of doing things, a new culture, a new ingredient, a new recipe creator ... Or maybe make you ask some of those 'big' questions above. Anyway here are a few that I have vowed to make someday soon, found recently from one of those sources shown above.
Cheating with chicken from Coles
I don't really approve of this recipe - well it's not really a recipe. Not even Coles has it in their recipe database. It's really an ad for various Coles products. However, because I am in this mode of trying to get the grandchildren to cook I thought that this might be an example of how a complete beginner could make something acceptably nutritious in the suggested half an hour, and then maybe adapt it to a less 'off-the-shelf' dish to even become a 'real' and original dish of their own.
You start with a pre-marinaded chicken. I checked the ingredients, and although there are some in there, that are variously unnatural - Maltodextrin, celery & herb extracts, tapioca starch ... there doesn't really seem to be anything too awful. The packaged roast vegetables seem to be just that, and the rice and quinoa has an emulsifier and salt, but not much else. And yoghurt and lemon - well they're just yoghurt and lemon aren't they.? Probably pretty expensive, however, in comparison to pantry and fresh food ingredients.
But then if they liked the taste they could make their own marinade, and vegetables, and just cook rice, quinoa, pasta - whatever. Even just serve with bread. or make a sandwich or wrap.
I'm not really into cookies, but I have to say they look good and they are a from a feature on healthy sweet things in the current Coles Magazine - they do have 'real' and enticing recipes too. No sugar - they even recommend sugar-free chocolate chips, the sweetness coming from Mejdool dates, and the carrots. No pushing of Coles products either. So if you are into cookies give them a go.
Coles again and a sort of novelty recipe if you can call it that. Also an ad - they had a section on pickles advertising various Coles pickles in jars. This one was Ogorki dill cucumbers, which were sliced and baked in the oven between two layers of grated cheddar. Then you build them into sandwiches. Or you could just snack on the cheesy pickles I guess. Might be a conversation starter and a nibble at a party. They also suggested making pickle butter with butter, chopped dill pickles, some pickle liquid, dill and chives.
The last one from Coles, with a note that it's a very good source of occasional recipes and how to's all made with ingredients that are easily available. Now who doesn't like carbonara or pesto? And here in a very simple recipe is the opportunity to think laterally by adding pesto to carbonara, and a pesto that in itself is not the standard pesto. Not to mention the extra nutrition from the peas.
This is from cookbook author Ed Smith in his substack newsletter Rocket and Sqash - there must have been a reference to it in one of my online newsletters, which I have now deleted. Alas no picture of the salad part - the apricot and tomato fregola:
"the fregola element effectively being a pasta salad, heavily laden with apricots, tomatoes, olives, sweet spices and fresh herbs"
How to make it is in the recipe thought.
Well spring is sort of here and summer not far away and we have a vegetarian in our midst.
From Ottolenghi and how could you resist? Maybe even if you're not a fan of beetroot. So much good stuff going on here.
"I would make it in the morning, if possible, and serve in the evening, allowing the flavours to settle and become deeper and more rounded."
says the man himself - bay leaves, garlic, fennel seeds and cherry or pomegranate molasses are in there as well. Yum - my next party pre nibble. That's sour cream on the side - or it could, of course, be yoghurt. You could plonk the salad on a bed of yoghurt ...
Chicken, bacon and spring onion skewers with stroganoff sauce
I'm including this one as an example of the myriad of different but wonderful looking dishes in Ixta Belfrage's book - just out - Fusão - which is her take on the food of her mother's country of Brazil. As she frequently says her recipes are not at all traditional but inspired by her mother's home. This one was chosen as a homage to the 2 million Russian or Eastern Europeans who now make Brazil their home. There are other similar skewer recipes online but none with the chips or the sauce.
It's a wonderful book - you could bookmark almost every recipe in it. At first glance you think you won't be able to make any of them because of the hard to find but common ingredients - cassava, red palm oil, a particular leaf, okra ... but she has substitutes for them all. And you don't have to use as much chilli as she does. So go buy it. Treat yourself.
Another Ixta Belfrage recipe - another party starter perhaps - but from a different source this time - The Guardian via one of their Feast newsletters. I don't think it's in either of her books.
It includes a recipe for chilli oil, but for those of us who are not up to the task, or can't be bothered, you could easily use your own favourite off the shelf chilli oil or crispy chilli oil - even better. She does adore chilli.
This is from today's Smitten Kitchen newsletter. Well they're moving into autumn over there in the US of A, just as we are moving into spring - two steps forward one step back at the moment. So winter squash - or pumpkin as we call it over here, is still around at reasonable prices. Well some of it. And doesn't it look great?
It's actually based on an Ottolenghi recipe - Pasta and butternut squash cake - but in this case I reckon Deb Perelman's version trumps Ottolenghi's - at least in the good-looking sense. It's also dead easy - you just throw all of the ingredients into one big bowl and then pack them into a spring-form cake pan (set on a tray or the juices will run everywhere) before baking in the oven. Now anyone can do that. I actually wrote about this particular genre of recipe back in July - Spaghetti, pie, cake, slice, which I know because I thought it would be a topic for a post - so I checked. There are lots of wonderful examples there of similar things.
Also from Smitten Kitchen. Also not that original I guess. Again I wrote about such things in a post called Killing Two Birds with One Stone back in 2022 but it's a nice example of the genre. I came to galettes late in life but they are a super easy way to encase something easily in pastry.
It might be spring, and we are having our first taste of spring asparagus tonight to go with the smoked trout risotto I'm planning to cook - because I need to use both the asparagus and the trout, but really it's a pretty wintry kind of day and much better suited to the galette above. Looking forward to sitting by the fire this evening.
YEARS GONE BY
September 23
2024 - Nubbins
2023 - A nifty writer's block idea
2022 - Now what?
2020 - Missing
2019 - Nothing
2017 - Steak au poivre
2016 - Lygon Street
Just discovered dinner tonight is "first taste of spring asparagus tonight to go with the smoked trout risotto" can't get much better than that! 🤪 👍