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.
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| 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...
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| (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.
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| 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...
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| "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.
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| 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:
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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