January 2021: Hot Apricot Flan

In case you missed it, you can read all about the starter and main course from the January menu here. In that post, I talk about how the third and final element of the meal merited separate attention. I stand by that assessment - and so we now turn to:

◘ THE DESSERT ◘

The book: Everyday Novelli (Jean-Christophe Novelli)

The recipe: p119, "Hot Apricot Flan"

Yes, to no one's great surprise, it's a Novelli creation that demands a post of its own. So far, Everyday Novelli has delivered us liquidy, garlicky hummus, the prospect of porridge-fed mussels, a surprisingly good dinner that would have been significantly less good if I hadn't intervened and refused to use an entire litre of double cream in its preparation... oh, and there was something about swans too.

Accordingly, my hopes are not high when the random finger of fate lands on our friend Jean-Christophe again. Especially since the introductory paragraph to this "hot" dessert concludes with the instruction "Serve hot or cold". With this level of attention to detail, I can already sense it's going to be one of those days.

I'm going to start with a confession here: I skim-read the recipe, saw flour among the ingredients, and idly assumed this "flan" would be of the "sweet tart with a base and a rim" variety. Reader, it is not. In the absence of condensed milk or a preponderance of egg yolks, however, neither it is a pudding in the sense of a crème caramel/custard/birthday flan. Quite what it is supposed to be, I'm still not entirely sure even now I've made the thing, to be honest.

Anyway, we kick off with a bit of preparation: Canned apricot halves are drained, placed in a bowl, and left to macerate in a little kirsch for an hour. Or they would be if we had any kirsch in the house, but there's no obvious reason we would and I'm not sourcing a whole bottle of the stuff during a lockdown just so I can sprinkle a thimbleful over some apricots, so I use sugar and a splash of wine to approximate a similar softening effect.

Once that's done, I can prepare my flan tin. Novelli calls for a 22cm tin. The two circular dishes I own - a regular deep pie/quiche dish, and a loose-based metal tin - are both around 28cm in diameter, so either way the end result here is going to be a bit shallower than what J-C has in mind, but it should be easy enough to tweak the cooking time if necessary. Since I'm still working on the assumption that this will be a pie-like creation that might benefit from being turned out onto a plate once it's done, I opt for the metal tin.

This is greased with butter and left to chill in the fridge for five minutes. It then gets taken out, greased with more butter, then dusted with a mixture of caster sugar and cocoa powder before being returned to the fridge for a further 20 minutes.

Seems like a lot of effort, but okay

What's going into that lovingly prepared tin, anyway? Let's see. I mix together some demerara sugar, vanilla, a little softened butter, a pinch of salt, 100ml of honey and four eggs. I then sift in 250ml of flour and beat it all together until it has a batter-like consistency.

To me, that already feels like the kind of thing you could pour into a dish and bake until it's nice and set and wobbly. So I am beyond bemused when the next step requires me to add 600ml of milk and 400ml of double cream.

I'll say that again: a litre of liquid.

This is the exact moment at which I become aware that: (a) this is not going to be a pie; (b) this is going to be fucking terrible.

Under normal circumstances I'd assume the recipe to be correct - people do test and proofread these books, right? - but we have very recent evidence of a Novelli recipe that quite clearly involved way too much cream to be edible and no one appears to have picked up on the error, so there's every chance the quantities are off here, too. Should it be 60ml and/or 40ml? Maybe it should. The trouble is - unlike with a savoury meal, where I'm experienced enough to make an executive decision and do things differently - I'm not brilliant with desserts so I can't really improvise and know for sure that I'm still going to end up with something that's in keeping with the spirit of the recipe.

So instead I beat in a litre of milk and cream.

Great

This goes into the fridge to "rest" for 20 minutes. I have a faint hope that this might thicken the mixture somewhat, but of course it doesn't. I'm not sure even freezing it would do much to thicken it, frankly...

Next it's time for assembly before my "flan" goes into the oven for 15-20 minutes. (Incidentally, Novelli wanted me to preheat the oven before doing all of the above. I remain convinced that cookbook authors are in cahoots with power companies to drive up their profits.)

My suspicions about the accuracy of the quantities are further confirmed when it becomes evident that there is way too much liquid here to comfortably fit into my tin, even though it's 6cm wider than the one Novelli recommended. Not only that, but the recipe also calls for me to "spoon in" the filling. Mine doesn't require any kind of spooning; it can be poured. So, yep - definitely a bit sus.

Now, remember those apricots from earlier? They're in the recipe name, so it's about time for them to become relevant again. I grab the bowl in which they've been macerating and toss them in 30ml of honey before arranging them on top of the filling. Why the honey? Allow me to quote from the recipe: "This coats the fruit and helps to prevent it from sinking."

Bear that in mind as I share this next photo:

Have a close-up for good measure:

There's not much "arrangement" involved here, for fairly obvious reasons. As well as enveloping the apricots entirely, you'll note that the liquid nature of the filling means some attractive globs of coagulated cocoa powder have floated to the surface, so that's delightful too.

If the apricots had been sat nicely atop a thick batter at this stage, the next thing would have been to brush them with a little oil before putting the dish in the oven. Since they're barely visible and drowning a milky death, however, that feels like something of a moot point. I figure it's time to just shove this bin fire into the oven and see what happens.

And that's when I notice the filling starting to leak out of the tin.

Well that's just terrific

Now, again: If it wasn't already abundantly clear that this was going to go wrong...

You can't beat a bit of optimism even at this late stage, though, and I figure that maybe if I get it in the oven ASAP, it'll start to set around the edges before too much of the filling escapes.

That'll be a no, then. (Still, at least the fucking apricots are visible now...)

Cursing the name of Jean-Christophe Novelli loudly enough to be heard halfway to Hither Green, I decide there's nothing else for it. I quickly salvage whatever I can and unceremoniously decant it into that pie dish I mentioned earlier:

...and finally my "flan" can start baking in earnest.

By this point I have absolutely no idea what's going to come out the other side. It's clearly not going to be what the recipe thinks it's going to be, but that's been evident for a while now. Even with whole eggs and not just yolks involved, maybe it'll be something close to a giant baked custard after all? Or perhaps more of a soufflé... only with, erm, apricots in it? 

Whatever it is, the sheer volume of what I've created here means the "15-20 minutes" of oven time ends up being more like 35-40 before it's sufficiently set to safely come out again. As for the end result, here it is:

To be honest, I'm just delighted it's baked enough to resemble something it might be possible to slice up. And cutting it open does reveal some kind of structural integrity, even if it's not necessarily the most appealing of cross-sections.

Whether it's edible remains to be seen, of course.

"Allow to cool for 15-20 minutes", the recipe says - again, I would remind you that this is called "Hot Apricot Flan" - then serve "with scoops of vanilla ice cream".

Can do.

What to say about this month's dessert, then? Well, despite everything, it's not terrible. It's got cream and sugar and eggs in it, after all - how bad can it be? 

The problem is you can tell the proportions are all off: it's not sweet enough, what with the sugar having been diluted by so much dairy, and the consistency is more gloopy than springy, making it borderline unpleasant after a few spoonfuls. If anything, it's reminiscent of stodgy 1980s school dinners, and that cannot possibly be what's intended. Still, you can conceal a multitude of sins under a dollop of ice cream, and I have to report that we do end up eating the whole thing over several days. Just not necessarily with vast amounts of enthusiasm. As Sam puts it, "it's fine, but you wouldn't serve it to someone...".

Ultimately, I would be fascinated to know what is wrong with this recipe - specifically, exactly how much milk and cream should be involved - because there's clearly a decent idea in there somewhere, it's just been thoroughly bludgeoned by a lack of care and attention. Much like everything else I've tried from Everyday Novelli so far.

Sam's conclusion is that I should just give the book to a charity shop, considering how badly things go every time I dip into it. But I don't think I can. Firstly, I secretly quite enjoy these kitchen disasters and the sheer disdain I feel towards Jean-Christophe Novelli as a result. And secondly, I'm not sure I could sleep easily knowing that someone else was having to suffer like this...

One-word verdict: Fucksake.

January 2021: Oven-Roasted Tomato Tartlets and Mellow Meatballs

New year, new concept! And the introductory Random Menu for January throws up an interesting-looking combination right from the off: a veggie starter, a meaty main, and a dessert that... well, we'll come back to the dessert another time, actually. It deserves a post of its own.

So let's begin by turning our attention to the first two courses - starting, as well one might, with:

◘ THE STARTER ◘

The book: Deeply Delicious (Weight Watchers)

The recipe: p14, "Oven-Roasted Tomato Tartlets"

I usually have to go straight on the defensive where this Weight Watchers cookbook is concerned - by and large, it does a decent job of providing seriously calorie-counted versions of familiar dishes, albeit sometimes with so much of the joy removed that you find yourself thinking "why not just have the regular version but less often?".

In any case, the idea of roasted tomatoes encased in filo pastry feels like a suitably light first course in anyone's book - so let's see where the joy can be sucked out of this one, shall we?

The ingredients list is already suspiciously short: store-bought filo pastry, tomatoes, olive oil, basil leaves, and seasoning. (The basil is even down as "optional"! There's no such thing as optional basil where tomatoes are concerned, if you ask me. Besides, it's not like it adds any calories, so...)

I immediately encounter an issue with the tomatoes. Given the nature of the dish, that's... not a great start. Basically, the recipe calls for plum tomatoes, which I already know our Asda don't have in stock fresh. I think about using baby plum tomatoes, which they do have, but I suspect they won't have the desired chunkiness after they've been the oven, so I end up opting for the heftiest available vine tomatoes.

(It's worth noting that the recipe also calls for a whole kilogram (!) of tomatoes, an idea which I nix immediately. Two 300g packs looks like plenty to me.)

First up, then: The tomatoes are halved, arranged cut side up on a rack, sprinkled with salt, and slowly roasted for an hour at 140°.

If you're thinking this doesn't sound like enough to do much to them, well... you'd be right. While we're not looking for "sundried and shrivelled" here, the photo accompanying the recipe makes it clear that the toms should have crinkled skins and be nicely reduced in size by the end of this hour - and they most definitely are not. It would probably have helped if I'd been asked to brush the tomatoes with olive oil before they went in the oven, but that devilish extra tablespoon of oil might have tipped the recipe into "unhealthy" territory, and we couldn't possibly have that, could we?

So instead - since the oven is getting turned up a few notches for the pastry anyway - I up the temperature and make sure the tomatoes have a chance to do a bit more. (Apparently plum tomatoes are known for having a lower water content - would that also make them roast more quickly? Maybe it would. I don't really do food science. Ah well.)

Meanwhile, the pastry. That accompanying photo I mentioned also shows an illustrative tartlet: a filo pastry base containing about four tomato halves. My tartlets are going to look different, by which I mean they're going to be smaller. This is mainly because I don't own "eight individual tartlet tins" as per the recipe (does anyone?), so I'm cobbling together a workaround involving a 12-hole muffin/Yorkshire pudding tin.

I need eight 15g sheets of filo according to the recipe, and I need to halve them before brushing them with oil, reassembling them, and... well, anyway. This is all a bit of a moot point since my filo packet is a different weight, has a completely different number of sheets, and I'm not working with eight tartlet tins in the first place. So I improvise something that I feel closely approximates the spirit of the recipe: using 120 grams' worth of filo, I take two smaller pieces of pastry and stick them together with some oil, ease them into the holes of my muffin tin, and "scrunch up the edges with my fingers" as requested by the recipe.

Well, okay, there could have been more scrunching...

That'll do. The remaining oil - there isn't much left by now - is brushed over the edges of the filo, and the tin goes into the oven alongside the tomatoes for 15 minutes or so, until the pastry starts getting some colour about it...

(well, sort of. It's crispy, anyway, even if it might not look it)

 ...and it's assembly time!

Because my tomatoes were a decent size in the first place and haven't really shrunk much at all, there's even less chance of me wedging several of them into each filo nest than I initially anticipated. I was thinking I might at least get two in there, but nope: it's one tomato half per filo receptacle, and that's your lot. Ho hum.

Russian Roulette. One of them is actually a pepper! (Not really.)

Sprinkle on some "optional" basil, grind over some black pepper, and the end result is... reasonably pleasing on the eye, I suppose?

So. Taste-wise, this is exactly what you'd expect (assuming you've ever eaten tomatoes and basil and pastry before, anyway). Even with insufficient oven time, the tomatoes have actually picked up plenty of flavour from the Maldon salt and the roasting process, but the rest of the dish is a bit - that word I feared at the start - joyless. Still perfectly decent, you understand, but that's a fairly low bar to set.

As expected, it's the "healthy" shortcuts that are the Achilles heel here. Using minimal oil means the pastry just gets a bit brown rather than becoming golden and crispy, and the whole thing is crying out for a grating of parmesan or a couple of mozzarella pearls or just something to make it a bit more interesting.

But hey - it's a starter on a three-course menu, it's not necessarily meant to blow you away. And in that respect, it does its job well enough.

Out of curiosity, I put the excess tomatoes back into the oven and let them soak up all the residual heat as it cools. This...

 
...is closer to what I imagined (burny bits aside). They barely make it to the fridge before being eaten up.

One-word verdict: Austere.

 

◘ THE MAIN COURSE ◘

The book: Nigella Express

The recipe: p369, "Mellow Meatballs"

I'm doing this one in the same post because - as the Nigella Express concept promises (and, for a change, lives up to) - it's a really straightforward dinner dish that doesn't involve too much preparation or complexity.

What it is, however, is a bit of a weird concept. Put it this way: What do you think of when you hear the phrase "Mellow Meatballs"? If your answer is "Swedish-Thai fusion cuisine", well, you're lying. And yet that's basically what we're dealing with - you can see the recipe for yourself here.

To be fair, Nigella talks in the blurb about buying "organic beef mini meatballs" from her supermarket, but at no point does the recipe itself specify exactly what type of meat or, indeed, what type of meatball to use (other than "mini"). It could just as easily be Italian-Thai fusion, is what I'm saying. But when your local Asda goes to the trouble of stocking vaguely authentic ready-made köttbullar, well, the only way they're going to keep stocking them is if I buy them...

"Swedish meatballs made in Sweden for a true taste
of Sweden" would have been even better

 
I'm actually going a bit less "express" than Nigella wants me to here, because I can't find a bag of pre-diced sweet potato and butternut squash as required by the recipe. There was a squash in this week's veg box, though, so buying a sweet potato and doing the peeling and dicing myself really isn't much of an inconvenience. 

Hey guys! Hey Gunter! Hey Hans!

 
Indeed, I have time to do it during the first stage of cooking, which involves heating the meatballs in a mixture of vegetable oil and Thai red curry paste:

Behold my oily balls

 
After sprinkling on some ginger and cinnamon, things quickly pick up pace. I add a tin of coconut milk, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tin of chickpeas (drained), mix it all together a bit, then stir through the diced squash and sweet potato, a squeeze of honey and 500ml of stock. I then bring the whole thing to the boil so it can simmer for 20 minutes.

Now, if you're thinking that seems like a lot of liquid, well... you'd be right.

Glub

We've had this kind of issue with Nigella before, haven't we? Maybe she's secretly northern, and as soon as the cameras are off she mops up every meal with several slices of supermarket own-brand white bread. I do hope so.

Anyway, there is going to be something to offset all this liquid - "serve with rice" is the instruction, so while the meatball pot is bubbling away, I make a pan of bog-standard white rice to accompany.

Some coriander is chopped as a garnish (I'd have stirred it through instead, but the recipe is the recipe, even when the recipe is wrong), and that really is all there is to it - my Mellow Meatballs are ready to be nibbled.

And at least it does reduce down a bit.

OK, so. Even with plenty of rice as a sponge, there is definitely still too much liquid here. I think the tin of tomatoes is the tipping point - you could easily replace them with a squirt of tomato purée (and maybe a handful of cherry toms) and there'd be no tangible difference to the end result other than it being less of a swimming pool of food.

But... it's really nice! The silky texture of the meatballs paired with Thai flavours is definitely still a bit weird, don't get me wrong - and I'm not sure what's especially "mellow" about it, since it's decently hot even with all that liquid (perhaps I just used a paste with a decent kick to it, I don't know). But it's tasty, it's filling, and it's an interesting take on a curry-but-not-quite-curry dish that turns out to be a perfectly timed midwinter warmer for us to enjoy while easing ourselves into the new Eurovision season.

The first Norwegian semi-final, since you didn't ask

Plus it's really quick and simple to rustle up. "Express", you might even say. Folks, I actually think this one will be finding its way into my rotating cast of regular meals (or to give it its full title, "meals I keep meaning to make more often but end up only doing every few months because tuna pasta is easier"). Hurrah!

One-word verdict: Jätteดี.

2021: The year of the Random Menu

Let's have another crack at this, shall we?

I'm still not entirely sure why my creative juices ran dry somewhere in the middle of last August. Partly it was a sense that - while the low infection numbers in the summer months allowed us to at least approximate some aspects of normal life - my internalised impetus for resurrecting The Random Kitchen had run along the lines of "OK, I'll do this while we wait for parkrun/theatre/unproblematic foreign travel to come back", and contrary to initial foolish hopes, none of those things were showing any genuine signs of returning. Could I really persist with a weekly blog called "Lockdown Edition" if what I'd actually committed to was an "Until We Return To Normality Edition" and there was no hint of normality on the horizon?

Combine that with a general lack of drive and concentration ever since the unpleasantness first began (I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to my bandmates for my near-complete inaction on the music front, too), and a couple of relatively underwhelming recipes with limited "fun content" potential was probably all it took to finish me off.

(There was actually an unwritten Week 19 post. It would have involved this:

 

 

...and, well, yeah. There's really only so much mileage you can get out of a wrap.)

But I do love writing The Random Kitchen.

Or perhaps it's fairer to say that I love having written it. It's a bit like running, in a way: reaching the end point is absolutely worth it, even if the things you need to do along the way can be a bit of a pain sometimes.

Plus (and believe me, I am not a humblebragger by nature, but) some of you have said the loveliest things about the blog and how you hope it comes back at some point. Never with any pressure attached, of course - and don't worry, such feedback only ever makes me feel motivated, hence really wanting to get things back on the road in some form.

So I sat down and had a think about how I could make a 2021 edition of The Random Kitchen happen, with all the fun and bewilderment that underpins the project but without it feeling like a weekly task that "has" to be checked off the to-do list, no matter what else is going on.

And here's what I came up with: The Random Menu.

The main change is that it'll be monthly instead of weekly, giving me a bit of wiggle room in terms of when I get round to doing it and writing about it. But to make up for that, there'll be more content each time, and hence more potential for hilarious kitchen disasters.

I'll be firing up the trusty random number generator as always - only this time I'll be using it to find us a starter, a main course, and a dessert. I'll then cook this three-course meal and blog about it as usual, including all the unappealing photographs of beige mush that keep you coming back to this page.

Of course, if any of the three recipes are particularly outlandish or ridiculous, I can and will give them their own separate post - there's little more fun than giving a cookbook author the kicking they deserve - while anything that's a bit on the dull side can just get a few paragraphs as part of a longer blog, rather than me having to pretend like I have any new and exciting insights to share about grilled chicken.

I mean, I couldn't even be bothered to focus the thing properly

In the interests of honesty, I cannot claim that I will necessarily make all three recipes on the same day - as much as we're boys with an appetite, there's still only two of us in this household - but it'll always be over the course of the same weekend or so, to ensure reasonable verisimilitude. Either that or I'll have to start look for willing local victims to help us out with the leftovers...

Incidentally, after this week's food shop (in which I'll pick up the ingredients for the January menu), we intend to switch to online grocery deliveries for a while. Whether this is still the case by the time of the February blog remains to be seen, largely depending on whether the newest restrictions succeed in making the outside world feel a bit less scary. But if it is, you can expect the "hunting in Lewisham Asda for alternative ingredients" element of the Random Kitchen experience to be replaced by "what entirely inexplicable substitutes will I be given in my delivery this time?". Fun!

Happy New Year to you all. Let's eat some weird stuff.