Week 52: Farmhouse Supper

The book: How To Boil An Egg (Jan Arkless)

The recipe: p102, "Farmhouse Supper"

And so... the end is near...

I can't quite believe it, but here we are. It's very nearly the end of 2016, and this post marks the fifty-second time I've used an online random number generator to pick a recipe from my underused cookbooks for me to make and subsequently blog about. A final summary post or two will follow, of course - but for now let's just give ourselves a hearty pat on the back for getting this far.

And while random.org doesn't always exhibit a sense of occasion (still no meringue swans, folks!), it does seem rather apt that we're ending this project where we began it, namely with Jan Arkless and her timeless guide to solo student cuisine. Even though this inevitably means a fairly pedestrian bit of cuisine for me to wax lyrical about.

Underwhelming though this conclusion to proceedings may be, the chosen recipe this week, "Farmhouse Supper", still feels like something of a bullet-dodge considering what other delights haunt the pages of How To Boil An Egg, from "Quick Kidney Special" and "Pork In A Packet" to, well, this:

I'm not sure whether to be more offended by the concept of "Potato Bolognese" or the concept of people who don't like pasta...

Whereas this final dose of randomness appears to be a reasonably tame weeknight concoction that - in addition to actually involving the titular eggs (albeit not boiled) - might actually require a quantum of skill and result in a hint of flavour. That'd certainly be a step forward for Jan.

Not that one

The prep: With How To Boil An Egg being aimed at students cooking for themselves on a budget, the first thing to do is double the quantities of everything so that it actually feeds both of us.

Jan describes this dish as a "tasty way of using up cooked potato", so the next thing is to cook some potatoes ("3-4" each - I go for 4, natch) then pretend they're leftovers. I also buy some smoked back bacon ("1-2 rashers" each - I go for 2, natch), a green pepper, and some eggs ("1-2" each - I go for 2, natch).

Other than that, it's all stuff I have in the house, as I suppose one might reasonably expect from this tome. Being outfoxed by a student cookbook would be an ignominious end to the random year and no mistake.

The making: Right from the start there are two things I like about this recipe (insofar as something so straightforward can even be called a recipe). Firstly, it lets you cook things in stages so only one pan and one dish are required - student kitchen-friendly, see? And secondly, the method starts with all the peeling and chopping instead of burying it away in the ingredients list in order to give the impression that things are a lot simpler than they actually are. Good on you, Jan.

I start, then, by slicing and dicing the potatoes, peeling and chopping the onion, de-rinding and dicing the bacon, and coring and chopping the pepper. And that's just the first two-line paragraph.

Ready and waiting

Oil is heated in a decent-sized frying pan and the bacon is fried gently for a few minutes before being removed to a saucer. I then fry the onion and pepper in the oil and bacon fat until they're starting to soften...

Superfluous illustration

...before adding the potato and sautéing (not that Jan calls it that, because that'd be too complex) until browned. The contents of the pan are then combined with the bacon and transferred to an ovenproof dish.

Next, a knob of butter is melted in the same pan and the eggs are fried. I make sure they're barely set before taking them off the heat, since I know the next step is to carefully slide them on top of the vegetables in the dish. Grated cheese is sprinkled on top - I go for Red Leicester solely because it's what we happen to have in the fridge, although it also adds a nice touch of colour - and the whole thing goes under a hot grill for a few minutes until the cheese is bubbly and welcoming.

I may have gone past "bubbly" to "slightly burny". Typical student.

And there we have it. Fifty-two weeks of random cookery, and the very last dish ends up being simplicity itself. Despite my earlier care, the eggs still end up more set than I'd like, but otherwise everything is as it should be. It's essentially a variation on bubble and squeak, a breakfast hash but served in the evening. And why not? It's about as much "cooking" as I ever managed in four years of university.

The eating: For some time now I've been concerned about, well, running out of words to describe food. Not that the Random Kitchen project has become a chore per se, but there's only so many times you can use phrases like "mouthfeel" or "pleasing texture" or "stuff swimming in other stuff" before it starts to get a bit samey.

So all I'm going to say about this is it tastes exactly as you'd expect it to.

Mm, farmhouse-y

It's deeply unambitious, as we've come to expect from Jan, but I suppose the teenagers of 1986 had less experience of exotic concepts like seasoning. If nothing else, nowadays you'd surely chuck in some cubed chorizo or another shop-bought ready ingredient to brighten things up a bit.

But honestly, for all it's necessarily straightforward, I'd have been happy enough to come up with something like this even as a late-90s student. It looks decent and feels substantial, there's even some actual nutrition hidden away in there, and you wouldn't especially need the grilling phase as the cheese melts into the whole thing anyway, so it's essentially an easy one-pan dinner. And even my more developed 38-year-old palate welcomes this as a basic interlude between the rich excesses of Christmas and NYE.

So while I'm not denying it's a bit of a downer on which to conclude The Random Kitchen in some respects, I'm happy enough. This project has always been about going with the flow and taking things as they come, after all - such is chance.

And hey, worse things have happened in 2016 than a "Farmhouse Supper".

Now that's what I call a happy ending.

One-word verdict: Mundane.

Supplementary words of reassurance: Regardless of whether I continue The Random Kitchen next year or not (and if I do, lord knows it won't be on a weekly basis - I am greatly looking forward to being allowed to cook what I want again!), I couldn't possibly allow this blog to peter out without a final visit to the pages of Everyday Novelli for a non-random encounter with some meringue birdlife. It will happen. Of course it will. Just give me a few days to work up the courage...

Week 51: Savoury Semolina Cake

The book: Indian Food Made Easy (Anjum Anand)

The recipe: p25, "Savoury Semolina Cake"

I'm going to be honest, "Savoury Semolina Cake" is not a collection of words I expected to encounter in a Random Kitchen context (though I probably should have, considering this is a project that's given us "Spiced Cucumber" and "Vegetables For One"). And yet I'm instantly sold on the concept.

I mean, just look at it. What do you mean you can't? Being from a BBC series and all, the recipe is right here. And it looks very much like My Kind Of Thing - more bread than cake really (and I've been wanting bread to come up again for a while), attractive to look at yet still faintly ludicrous in the execution. I absolutely approve.

Plus it's two days to Christmas when I spin the random wheel and there's going to be no shortage of rich and, well, very English food in the week ahead, so why not try something authentically Indian? At least I assume it's authentic; the introduction in the book likens it to something called handvo, but that comparison is absent in the online version of the recipe. And in fact various sites suggest that handvo contains lentils and/or paneer and/or, at the very least, appears to be something similar but fundamentally different. So perhaps this isn't all that authentic after all - there is a "purists beware" warning attached, I suppose. Hm. Oh well, I'm sufficiently culturally ignorant to proceed regardless. Let's loaf!

The prep: I have an ideally sized tin for this particular bit of baking (thank you, Jane Asher and Poundland), which comes as something of a relief since I've spent all week battling with various recipes for gluten-free Christmas cookies, so any way in which Anjum can live up to her claim and actually make things easy is extremely welcome at this stage.

To my surprise, there's also very little I need to buy in. The titular semolina is missing from my cupboards, of course - I'm not a school dinnerlady in the 1980s, so why would I need that particular retro horror in my life? (Still, it could be worse: it could be frogspawn tapioca.)

I also pick up some fresh green beans even though frozen would be fine (the decadence!) and some proper Greek yoghurt with actual fat in it, since I'm keen to avoid a repeat of the curdling episode that dogged Anjum's first appearance in this blog.

The making: You can see the recipe for yourself, as noted above, but I'll summarise the steps anyway. To begin, onion is chopped, carrot is peeled and grated, green beans are "roughly broken up" (I do love a vague instruction), and petits pois are allowed to defrost slightly. These vegetables are then combined with the semolina, yoghurt, ginger, chopped chillies, chilli powder, turmeric and salt to form a fairly thick batter.

So far so easy.

A healthy dose of vegetable oil is then heated and some mustard and cumin seeds are briefly fried until fragrant and a-popping. The seeds and oil are stirred through the batter, followed by the bicarbonate of soda, and... oh. That's all! It's ready to go into the tin and, from there, into the oven.

Does look a bit like vomit though

Wait wait, I almost forgot something. The online version of the recipe (which I'm working from in writing this post at the in-laws' over Christmas) lists sesame seeds in the ingredients but doesn't expressly tell the reader what to do with them, implying that they should be toasted along with the other seeds. Yet the book version definitely tells me to scatter them over the contents of the tin before it goes into the oven for 35-40 minutes. I'm not sure why Anjum changed her mind or what version is supposed to be the definitive one, but it certainly comes out looking nice(r) with the sesame seeds atop the "cake":

Cracking loaf, Gromit

And just look at those slices. Colourful to the point of ridiculous - who wouldn't want to sink their teeth into something so riotously vivid?

"Green-studded radioactive orange" is my favourite colour of food

I am entirely serious here, by the way. That is absolutely the kind of thing I always want to be eating. Heck, if anything, it looks nicer and moister than the version from the TV show, which seems a bit flat and sad by comparison. Win!

The eating: This basically goes exactly as I predict: Sam is ambivalent whereas I really quite like it. It's not spectacular - how could it be with those simple ingredients? - but its humble slices are home to a pleasing blend of vegetable crunch, soggy semolina (soggy semolina) and a slow-building rustic spiciness. All in return for minimal difficulty and minimal outlay - "Indian Food Made Easy" indeed.

It's still hard to know exactly what it's for, admittedly. I think the key, from an ignorant western perspective, is to look past the c-word of the title and treat this as something closer to a bread. Not the kind of bread you'd butter and use in a sandwich, obviously - but a couple of slices are enough for a decent lunch option or, frankly, a quick and moderately healthy breakfast jolt to the tastebuds. Has to be better than another turkey sandwich, right?

Added to which, less the two slices we taste-tested, it's even a perfect fit for our tupperware.

OCD-tastic!

Definitely a success, then. I may not be wasting any of it on Sam, but I will absolutely be making this again in 2017 and beyond.

One-word verdict: Fun!

Week 50: Chowder with Asian Flavours

The book: Nigella Express

The recipe: p164, "Chowder with Asian Flavours"

This recipe is a disappointment. That's not a spoiler - as if I'd give the game away this early in proceedings - but come on. Nigella is the kind of person who peppers her food writing with words like "rebarbative" and "subfusc", yet here we're expected to be satisfied with "Asian Flavours"? I know I was criticising Ainsley for his twee recipe names just last week, but if Nigella can't deliver a bit of casual pretentiousness, qui le peut?

Despite this, I'm looking forward to chowing down on Nigella's chowder. (Oh, behave.) As often, her introductory words contain a lot of provisos and excuses - apparently true foodies would have legitimate issues with her omission of a roux and, god forbid, the use of coconut milk instead of milk milk - but considering I'm ignorant enough that my only available Mallett's Mallet answer for "chowder" would be "clam", I'm more than willing to be carried along by this Lawsonian wave of culinary sacrilege.

Plus it's midweek and we've just got back from holiday via a traumatic experience involving buses, December weather and Croydon, so a warming and easy dinner - sorry Nigella, not a supper - ought to hit the spot nicely.

The prep: Just when I thought I might get away with it, the Random Kitchen requires me to buy yet another jar of spices I'll end up using once or twice then forgetting about at the back of the cupboard.

Overkill

Yes, it's mace, a word I associate more with self-defence sprays than any particular kind of cuisine, but apparently it's required here, as are lots of vegetables - potatoes, leeks, baby corn and tinned sweetcorn, for a start, many of which might have been in our veg box delivery if I hadn't cancelled it this week (d'oh). The stars of this particular chowder are fish (Nigella wants fresh cod, but it's a soup, for god's sake - generic frozen white stuff will do) and prawns (where frozen is fine, apparently).

There are a few standard ingredients here - coconut milk is already in the cupboard, red chillies are already in the freezer - but otherwise there's quite a lot to buy in (and I haven't even got to the coriander yet). I suppose that's in keeping with the bright, fresh and hopefully quick nature of this particular flavour combo, so I can take a bit of a hit in the wallet department.

The making: There's lots of peeling and chopping buried away in the ingredient list to make the method look more straightforward. Sneaky sneaky.

Anyway, I start by bringing some chicken stock ("not instant") to the boil in a medium-sized pan, before chucking in some chopped potatoes, leeks and baby corn and cooking them for ten minutes along with a couple of bay leaves and a generous teaspoon of ground mace.

Stock photo

Next up, a tin of coconut milk is added, along with 600g of cubed "cod" fillets and a generous glug or ten of lime juice. This concoction is brought back to the boil and simmered for a minute until the fish is obviously starting to cook a bit.

A bag of frozen prawns and a drained can of sweetcorn are added, and back to the boil it all comes once again - for an "express" recipe, this one does seem to require a lot of standing around waiting for things to start bubbling - before we're ready to season and serve. Suffice it to say that this involves two of my favourite ingredients:

Yay

And the chowder is duly bowled up, garnished, and sent tablewards. Since it seems quite substantial in its own right, I even manage to refrain from serving it with a hunk of white bread. Suppressing one's inherent northernness is tougher than it may appear.

The eating: To my surprise, the portion sizes here really are substantial, actually. For once, "Serves 4" means what it says!

It's a decent enough eating experience, with the veggies retaining their bite, the coconut milk adding a hint of creamy decadence, and the coriander/chilli delivering the requisite freshness. Of course, there are complaints too. (There are always complaints.)

Firstly, the texture. I get that a chowder is always going to be a bit "stuff swimming in liquid" (and it's not like Nigella doesn't have history on that front), but this seems a bit more watery than it needs to be, which detracts from the potential luxuriousness of the dish somewhat - or at least from its visual impact, which isn't altogether unimportant.

Glub

And secondly, the seasoning. The chowder is overly salty, but that's fine - it comes with the territory with fish dishes, and it's easily tweaked next time round. What's less excusable is the mace. I don't get it and I don't get what it's doing here. All it seems to add to proceedings is a slightly, well, dirty taste and a generic numbness of the tongue, both of which could surely have been better achieved with more chilli and/or conventional seasoning. As it stands, there's an overwhelming tingly mace-ness to the whole thing that rather overshadows the subtlety of the fish and prawn flavours. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find something do to with the rest of the jar.

The dish as a whole isn't at all bad, though. It introduces some much-needed bright and striking flavours to the darkness of winter solstice week, and while the cooking time and the (not-so-)hidden instructions mean it's an awful lot less "express" than Nigella would like it to be, it's certainly not a complicated or difficult meal to prepare. Coconut milk aside, it's even quite healthy, yet it still manages to feel like a bit of a treat.

Definitely happy to try this again some time, in other words. Just, y'know, I might go easy on the mace.

One-word verdict: Tingly.

Week 49: Cheese 'n' Onion Tarte Tatin

The book: Ainsley Harriott's Meals In Minutes

The recipe: p45, "Cheese 'n' Onion Tarte Tatin"

You're on the internet, so there's every chance you're familiar with this image:

It's clumsily executed, but you know what it's getting at - a thoroughly decent human being he may be, but Ainsley is an easy figure of fun, and he does himself no favours with recipe titles like "Cheese 'n' Onion Tarte Tatin". I mean, seriously. What's so wrong with the word "and"? What degree of jollity and merriment is actually injected into proceedings through the use of that abbreviation? It's a tarte tatin, not a children's birthday party, so stop making balloon animals and let me start cooking for fuck's sake.

You may think I seem a little grouchy, but my mood is immediately lifted when I inspect this week's recipe in greater detail - for there it is, right in front of my eyes:

Oh glorious, glorious fate.

Anyway, all frivolity aside, this sounds like my kind of dish (who doesn't like a mouthful of tart?) and I could use something relatively quick and easy on this particular weekday evening. Besides, with the Random Kitchen having forced me to make all kinds of "pies" that are little more than a collection of stuff in a casserole dish with a leaf of flaky pastry on top, it'll be nice to conjure up something with an actual base for once. Alors: on y blooming well va!

The prep: Being a speedy recipe, we're in Jus-Rol territory as far as the shortcrust pastry goes, which is fine by me - I'm sure I'll try making my own one day, but not right now. Onion-wise, the recipe calls for three large red ones, which I deem to be roughly equivalent to the four medium-sized ones the local Asda is willing to surrender up to me.

The cheese we normally have in the house is of the low-fat variety, but I figure the bonding properties of regular Cathedral City might come in handy for this particular dish. Meanwhile, the suggestion of a "mixed salad, to serve" is neatly covered by this week's veg box delivery, so that's useful.

There's also the small matter of dark muscovado sugar...

Cake tin, sugar, cheese. Inget konstigt alls.

...which is a minor extravagance just for the two tablespoons I need here, but it's nearly Christmas biscuit season, so I suspect I can find a use for the rest.

The making: Butter and oil are combined and heated in a frying pan, then the onions - already thinly sliced - are cooked until softened. This being a quick meal, Ainsley wants me to do this for a mere 5-8 minutes before proceeding. I've got some time in hand and I know from recent experience that onions only benefit from a bit of the slow and gentle treatment, so I probably give it closer to 20 minutes before adding in the sugar and some balsamic vinegar and cooking the mixture for a wee while longer until it's nicely caramelised.

Getting a distinct sense of déjà oignée here

This suspiciously gravy-base-like mixture is spooned into the bottom of a cake tin, then most of the cheese is sprinkled on top. Next, I roll out the pastry into a circle slightly larger than the circumference of the tin, then press it over the filling and tuck down the sides lightly but assertively. I expect this to be awkward, but it all goes well, leaving me to prick with a fork to my heart's content.

Comprehensively pricked

That done, the tin goes into the oven for 25 minutes, then comes out to sit on the side briefly before the real fun begins: inverting it and turning it out onto a serving plate. This can only go smoothly.

And yet, to my shock, it kind of does. There is definitely now a savoury tarte tatin on a plate on the side in my kitchen, with only minimal slop and spillage around the sides. That, in itself, is a good thing, and I quickly sprinkle over the rest of the cheese to finish off the recipe before anything goes wrong.

What's less good is my dawning realisation that - having naïvely imagined this as an easy dinner option - there really is nowhere near enough food here. I mean, it's quite calorific what with being pastry and cheese and all, but it's not especially substantial. And pairing it with a salad is hardly going to help matters. All told, dinner might be a bit on the light side tonight.

"Serves four", the recipe claims. Four what - dormice?

Prick with a fork...

This sense of impending dread notwithstanding, there's little else for it but to plate up and see what happens. So that's what I do:

Sam: "It looks like chocolate pizza."

The eating: Hm. Substantial or not, I'm expecting this tarte to be tasty and a little bit naughty, yet somehow it's neither of those things.

For one thing, the trouble with the title's jocular focus on "cheese 'n' onion" is that you imagine the filling will have a flavour to match. I mean, I'm not expecting a grab bag of Walkers crisps or anything, but still - there should be far more cheese and far less onion going on here. "Onion 'n' onion" would have been closer to the mark. Or just, y'know, "caramelised onions on a shortcrust pizza base", because that's all this really is.

It's all very basic, basically.

It disappears quickly, and not just because there's not much of it - it is perfectly okay - but even in its natural habitat as part of a lunch buffet involving chicken legs and pasta salad (say), this still wouldn't be close to the star of the show. More pressingly, I have definitely bollocksed up the "providing a filling dinner" part of my househusbandly duties this evening.

"There's more salad...?" I venture when we're done. This earns me A Look.

There's only one thing for it.

Second dinner

Sorry, Sam - I guess that's what happens when your boyfriend is a prick with a random cookery project. 

One-word verdict: Bemusing.

Week 48: Gillygate Bean Casserole

The book: My green recipe folder

The recipe: no. 16, "Gillygate Bean Casserole"

I feel a bit sorry for food stylists. I mean, obviously it's kind of hilarious that there's a profession called "food stylist" in the first place, but still, it must be a thankless task at times. For every glistening summer vegetable to show off in all its colourful glory, there's an unforgiving meatloaf or a lumpy slab of grey fish. And for every luxurious chocolate mousse or succulent, juicy burger, there's a bean casserole.

All I'm saying, folks, is don't expect too much on the visual front this week.

We're back with the recipes my mum armed me with when I first moved to Germany, and this week's random.org choice is exactly the kind of undemanding, cheap and hearty dish you might expect a recent student to welcome with open arms. So what do you reckon - did I ever get round to actually making it during my five-year stint in Mainz and Hamburg?

Maybe it's the name. Gillygate is a pleasant if unassuming thoroughfare in York, and I was exploring the world of Rheinstraße and Jungfernstieg at the time. Besides, it's easy to be lazy about cooking in a country where currywurst and döner are available on every corner.

Why is this recipe named after Gillygate, anyway? The street has shops, of course, but no bean emporiums as far as I'm aware. I have to assume this is something my mum randomly snipped out of a local paper many moons ago (and subsequently typed up), because literally the only reference I can find on the entire internet comes from the October 2013 edition of Open Field, "the monthly publication of the parish of Laxton & Moorhouse". Which sounds like it should be supplying the headlines for the missing words round on Have I Got News For You, let's be honest. Anyway, it seems someone made it for a WI bake-off that month and it went down well (helped, perhaps, by being actually vegetarian, unlike the leek pie which "contained beef" - ahh, country life).

Anyway, the provenance of the recipe may remain a mystery but anything that gets the nod from the WI sounds promising to me, so let's see where this blast from the past takes us...

The prep: Never mind Nigella and her belief that we all have merguez, halloumi and flame-roasted peppers on standby at all times - this is the epitome of a "store cupboard meal", so much so that I barely have to buy any of the ingredients at all. It helps that there's a certain degree of freedom on the bean front - I opt for some black-eyed beans and a tin of "three-bean salad", though haricots or anything else would be fine really. Other than that, I need to get some chutney in (which is fine, since there's never a bad time to have caramelised onion products in the house) and blitz some old bread to make some wholemeal breadcrumbs, and that's about it.

Thus, with the beans duly drained...

Good for your heart

...we're ready to get started.

The making: Butter is melted in a saucepan and a large onion is sweated down "for about 6 mins or until soft". I double that, if not more, because (a) I'm not in a rush and (b) yum. Wholemeal flour, potent mustard and some ground ginger are stirred in, then milk is gradually added until a "smooth sauce" emerges - smooth but very thick, let it be noted.

This is then supposed to be poured over the beans in a casserole dish, but pourability is not high on the attributes of this particular "sauce", so I stir the beans into the pan instead.

Vomitastic

Herbs (oregano, thyme, basil) are stirred into the mix along with some brown sugar and the aforementioned chutney, then the whole lot is slopped into a dish and topped with a mixture of grated cheddar, parsley and breadcrumbs.

And that's your lot, more or less - it goes into the oven for 35 minutes and comes out looking like this:

...which is about as "stylish" as this particular food stylist is going to manage on this occasion.

The eating: Inspired by vague childhood memories (and possibly also by the "leek" casserole in Open Field), I decide we need to add some meat to proceedings, so I haphazardly grill some frankfurters as an accompaniment of sorts. They look a bit sad alongside the served-up casserole, which predictably takes on the appearance of pigswill, but so be it.

Wurst. Styling. Ever.

The main thing is it tastes good. And it does - really good, actually. It's nothing out of the ordinary, but the filling manages to feel quite decadent and creamy even though it doesn't contain any cream, while the crunch of the topping and the wholemeal herbiness of the contents gives it a rustic appeal that - now that I think about it - really ought to be tailor-made for a Nottinghamshire WI group.

That's not one of the more obvious compliments I've ever paid a recipe, but let's roll with it.

So, yep. Not a sophisticated meal by any stretch of the imagination, but a hearty, filling and dead simple one that anyone could make (why isn't this gracing the pages of How To Boil An Egg, really?). If your kids are of or approaching university age, you could do far worse than pack them off to pastures new with this recipe in their arsenal. They might even get round to making it one day. Then again...

One-word verdict: Substantial.