Week 32: Swedish Cinnamon Cake

The book: Swedish Cakes and Cookies

The recipe: p68, "Cinnamon Cake"

Writing about Sju sorters kakor might not have had immediate results, but as it turns out, we've only had to wait a few more weeks for the random fairies to finally pick it from the shelf.

What I didn't make clear in my paean to the sweet treats of my Anglo-Scandinavian youth is that I've only ever made biscuits (I can't bring myself to say "cookies") from the hallowed pages of the book in question. So I'm quite pleased that something non-biscuity has come up this week - or, as Senator Vreenak would have it:

Quite a simple-looking cake, too, from a double-page spread whose illustrations are all quite... brown. This reflects the Scandinavian penchant for dark, wintry flavourings: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamom and the like. It also makes a lot of sense in the context of the fika tradition - if you're drinking crazy-strength coffee like it's tap water, you need some robust ingredients to compete.

The book presents the Cinnamon Cake in a fabulous star-shaped tin. I don't have one of those - though I'm starting to think I ought to - so I'll be going full Lewisham and using a Poundland loaf tin and a Poundland tin liner instead. The Jane Asher range, mind you, so not just any old tat...

Like many of the offerings in Swedish Cakes and Cookies, the Cinnamon Cake is accompanied by a cheerful note stating: "This recipe won a prize in 1965." Cheerful but fundamentally uninformative, since no clarification is given as to what the prize actually was. Booker? Nobel Peace? Eurovision Song Contest?

Points mean prizes

Still, an award is an award, and this bodes well as we proceed to the nitty-gritty of this week's random choice.

The prep: The ingredient list couldn't be more generically "cake" if it tried. I mean, just look at this lot: eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder and butter, plus some flaked almonds for garnishing. It's going to be quite a straightforward affair, in other words - probably for the best if you're expected to present seven different types of goodies to your mid-afternoon guests.

All I need to buy is some ground cinnamon. There is some in the cupboard, but it has a best before date of 200*cough*, so best to refresh our supplies, I think.

The making: The eggs and sugar are beaten - using an electric mixer, natch, I'm not that much of a masochist - until light yellow in colour and very thick in texture. Next, the dry ingredients are stirred through. There's no mention of sifting them first, so it's no great surprise when some lumps ensue, but I try my best to break them up with the wooden spoon.

The butter is combined with some water and heated to boiling point, then added to the batter and mixed well. The fact that it isn't left to cool (even a little) before being added seems to take care of the remaining lumps, so that's useful I guess. The batter is then poured into the prepared loaf tin and the flaked almonds are sprinkled on top.

I've got a cake to flake

Into the oven it goes - bottom shelf, 45 minutes - and out it comes again. It's now that I start to realise the benefits of using a flatter, shallower tin (star-shaped or not). The more compact loaf shape has risen quite considerably in the middle, pushing the almonds down to the sides and leaving the top of the cake somewhat bereft and bare.

Aesthetically sub-optimal

Still, it looks and smells promising, and I can't fault the Poundland bakeware when it comes to easy removal from the tin for subsequent cooling. Chalk one up for Team Asher.

The eating: No complaints here. The almonds and, well, the fact that it's been baked mean it has a nice bite on the outside, while the inside is reasonably moist - though I suspect it won't remain that way for long, so we'll just have to eat the whole thing within a few days. What a disaster.

Arty angles

The recipe promised something straightforward to the point of unexciting, and it's fair to say that the end result could probably do with a slightly more imposing presence - tweaking the cinnamon content, adding a pinch of ground cloves or even just toasting the almonds would give it a hint of personality it's arguably lacking.

But it's still very pleasant and would go nicely with a cup of tea (or strong black coffee, yes) on a cold winter's afternoon. And you can always customise it for summer.

All in all, this is a practical, easy-to-make cake that'll never be the star of the fika table, but that's quite happy to play a valuable supporting role.

One-word verdict: Everyday.

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Week 31: Rustic Walnut Bread

The book: Good Housekeeping New Step-by-Step Cookbook 

The recipe: p420, "Rustic Walnut Bread"

Comfortably into the second half of the Random Kitchen year as we now are, it's no surprise to note that we've encountered most of the standard recipe types along the way: main courses, soups, salads, cakes, snacks, all have made their way onto this blog. I'm still waiting for a good non-cake dessert (chocolate overload pls kthxbai), but in the meantime, it's a warm welcome to a staple of the cookbook pages that somehow hasn't troubled us so far: bread.

Observant readers will have spotted that I like a good GIF almost as much as I like a bad pun, but I promise to try and steer clear of the most obvious contenders here. No "use your loaf", no complaints about the recipe being a pain in the arse, no groansome lines about what I "knead" to do next.

(There may be the odd exception.)

Instead, it's full speed ahead with what looks like a promising if straightforward bit of home baking. No crazy techniques, no outlandish ingredients, just a hearty - "rustic", even - loaf of good old-fashioned bread. What could go wrong?

The prep: I thought I had some fast-action dried yeast left in the cupboard from baking adventures in years gone by, but apparently not. Chances are I may have clocked the best-before date and thrown it out at some point (that'd make a pleasant change). Anyway, that goes on the shopping list along with the titular walnuts. Everything else - and, granted, it's a pretty short ingredient list - is already to hand.

At this point I decide to make a minor change to the recipe, replacing a small quantity of the plain white flour with rye flour in order to make the loaf ever so slightly less, well, white. While a long way from intolerant, out-and-out white bread doesn't seem to particularly agree with either of us, and the purpose of Random Kitchen isn't to make people feel actively unwell (even if the Spiced Cucumber recipe might have seemed like cruel and unusual punishment).

Granted, Sam doesn't particularly like walnuts either, but the concept of the blog dictates that I produce something at least vaguely approximating the actual recipe, so let's push on.

The making: The aforementioned mixed flours and some salt are introduced to a bowl. Butter is rubbed into the flour, then the dried yeast and "roughly chopped" walnuts are stirred in. Next, a well is formed in the middle of the flour mixture, tepid water is added (I do love a recipe that uses the word "tepid"), and subsequent stirring yields a suitably smooth dough. This is then turned out onto a floured surface and kneaded for a good ten minutes until nice and stretchy.

Dough ball

During this process, I observe that the "punching the dough" school of kneading tends to work better when you don't miss the dough completely and twat your knuckles off the work surface instead. Ow.

In the next step, the above big ball o' dough is split in two. Yes, this is a BOGOF deal. And while two loaves is more fresh bread than a two-person household reasonably requires, the recipe helpfully notes that the end result is suitable for freezing, so we'll cope. Each of the dough portions is fashioned into a "roll" (the photo in the book helps to define this term more usefully), covered with a damp tea towel and left in a warm place for an hour or so until nicely risen.

All your perfect imperfections

Once risen, the tops of the loaves are gently slashed (if that isn't a contradiction in terms), and they're ready to go into the oven. At this stage the dough seems a bit on the lumpy side, but that's mainly down to the walnuts - they'll be swallowed up when the bread rises further as it bakes, leaving a fairly smooth surface once the loaves come out of the oven a wee while later.

Double trouble, twofold huddle

Those slashes could have been a bit less gentle, as it turns out. But otherwise these are some pleasingly crusty loaves of bread - and, in a nice bit of efficiency, the perfect sidekick to a carrot and coriander soup from the pages of the very same Good Housekeeping cookbook (soup not pictured because I'm lazy).

The eating: Generally pretty triumphant, though this was hardly likely to turn out badly.

I realise "rustic" is by no means synonymous with "heavy and challenging to eat", but I probably do associate it with a slightly darker loaf than this (and that's with my addition of rye flour). In this case, I suppose it's the simple ingredients/techniques and the haphazardly chopped nuts that are meant to give it that rough-and-ready edge, so I don't really have any grounds for criticism.

We make it and we take it home

As for the bread itself, the crusts and edges are particularly good, while even the centre of the loaf is pleasingly dense without being stodgy. For all it's the walnuts that give the slices that visually appealing texture, Sam would obviously prefer this without the walnuts and I don't necessarily disagree - their flavour is by no means overpowering, but this would work just as well as a plain oat-topped loaf or similar.

In any case, it makes for an excellent soup sponge, and the second loaf in the freezer (we may have destroyed the first one in a single sitting...) subsequently proves to be a robust toaster with jam for breakfast and an able bearer of cream cheese at lunchtime. Perhaps that's the true definition of "rustic" here - ready and willing to cope with whatever you might throw at it. 

One-word verdict: Satisfying.

Week 30: Paneer Makhani

The book: My red recipe folder

The recipe: no. 3, "Paneer Makhani" (Madhur Jaffrey)

Spoiler alert: This recipe is pretty straightforward and turns out pretty well. I only say this because Sam is concerned that I'll have nothing to write about this week.

With that in mind, can we talk about paneer for a moment? Or "fresh Indian cheese", as the recipe also calls it. Paneer is a weird concept. I realise it's a good way of adding some variety and protein to a traditionally meat-free Indian diet, and I suppose the texture isn't all that far away from tofu and the like, but the idea of using a kind of unsalted squidgy halloumi crossbreed in a curry is definitely an odd one to this narrow western mind.

It probably doesn't help that my past encounters with it have been largely underwhelming. Nevertheless, when a football forum friend gave this recipe a glowing review, I felt obliged to print it out and file it away in my curry folder for whenever I felt ready to give paneer another chance. Thanks to Random Kitchen, that moment has arrived.

And look - it turns out to be from the pen of Madhur Jaffrey. From the vegetarian version of my trusted favourite Curry Easy, no less. That makes me more confident of a successful outcome (and entirely confident that fucking loads of salt will be involved).

You wouldn't argue with her, mind

The prep: The list of ingredients is long and potentially daunting, but most of the spices and similar are already safely nestled in the bosom of my corner cupboard. The core ingredients of the dish all need to be procured from Big Tesco, i.e. passata, double cream and the paneer, which I'm pleased (and relieved) to be able to pick up ready-cubed without it being too much of a rip-off.

I also need to get hold of some fenugreek. The recipe calls for dried leaves, which I'm fairly sure the local Sri Lankan shops would have, but I don't have a great deal of time or motivation today so I decide to go with the ground seed variety from the Tesco shelves instead. Should ultimately have a similar effect, I hope.

The making: I start by toasting some cumin seeds ahead of grinding them. This gives me a handy opportunity to use possibly the saddest kitchen utensil I own: a one-egg frying pan.

Serve garnished with salty singleton tears

Then I begin in earnest by taking a big bowl and stirring together (deep breath now) the passata, the cream, some grated ginger, garam masala, lemon juice, sugar, a chopped green chilli, some chilli powder, the ground cumin and the fenugreek. Oh, and a teaspoon of salt. There we go!

In another bowl, I toss together the cubed paneer, some freshly ground black pepper and another quarter-teaspoon of salt, because Madhur hates my arteries. Next, some more cumin seeds (left whole this time) are cooked briefly in butter and oil before the seasoned paneer cubes are added. The paneer is left on a medium heat, with occasional stirring, until lightly but nicely browned all over. And yep, it still smells like grilled halloumi. Paneer is weird.

The tomato, cream and spice mixture is then added to the pan and stirred through while being brought to a simmer. Five minutes or so of gentle heating and careful stirring later (presumably so as not to damage the structural integrity of the cheese), it's ready to be served up. A garnish of chopped coriander as per the final instruction, and we are all set for some (not-so-)hot curry action. 

The eating: I was warned by the aforementioned forum friend that I might need a lie-down after consuming this. And, indeed, it is a very rich eat. Makes sense - we're talking about a dish that's mainly cheese, cream and butter, after all.

In many respects it's not a particularly sophisticated recipe, and that's reflected in the preparation time and the ingredients - no slow-cooked onion base or similar to provide a bit of contrast and depth, just vivid flavours and a sheer overload of decadent dairy.

Partial eclipse of the plate

Sam really, really likes it. Though I'm also partial to occasional decadence, I'm a bit less enthusiastic - I haven't really been one for creamy curries since I was a kid, although I can't deny this is far more interesting than your average korma, with the earthiness of the fenugreek and the tang of the tomatoes helping to counteract the ludicrous richness of the cream/cheese combo. Pairing it with some brown basmati rice and soft roti certainly helps; it's a dish that absolutely needs to be teamed up with unglamorous assistants to prevent it from overshadowing proceedings.

I'm even happy enough with the paneer element; the frying means the cheese cubes are slightly tougher on the outside and a very tiny bit soft on the inside, making for a more pleasant mouthfeel than I'd remembered. Like last week's Nigella "tagine", though, it is a bit too "chunks of stuff floating in lots of liquid" for my liking - a substantial vegetable, or even some green lentils or spinach, would have fleshed this out nicely without representing too much of a compromise on the luxuriousness front.

Still, I think I'd make this again if I was putting on a spread of several curries, since it serves a purpose and it is nice. I'd even go so far as to say it's pretty close to restaurant quality - it's just not the kind of thing I'd actually order at a restaurant, at least as a standalone dinner dish, since it's really quite a challenge to eat in significant quantities.

One-word verdict: Rich.

Week 29: Lamb, Olive and Caramelised Onion Tagine

The book: Nigella Express 

The recipe: p114, "Lamb, Olive and Caramelised Onion Tagine"

On a freelance translation job on the outskirts of Frankfurt several years ago, I worked with an American fella called Bruce. One lunchtime, Bruce offered to make us all quesadillas. "Well," he immediately added, "they're not authentic as such - I don't have any cheese or beans so I'm just using fried vegetables. Oh yeah, and I couldn't find tortillas so I've got pitta bread instead."

My reaction then is remarkably similar to how I feel on reading this week's Random Kitchen recipe, because Nigella, too, is full of provisos from the get-go. First and foremost, this tagine isn't actually a tagine. "In Morocco, most tagines are made in pressure cookers," she says by way of explanation - then promptly tells us she prefers not to use a pressure cooker either, recommending a standard casserole dish instead. Meanwhile, the one relatively out-there ingredient (caramelised onions from a jar) is immediately compromised by Nigella's concession that home-made ones are better if you can be bothered to make them.

All very promising, I'm sure. Still, one of the guiding principles of Nigella Express is to minimise effort even at the expense of authenticity. It's our third time dipping into the book and the great lady has been reasonably kind to us so far, so let's see if she can hit the nail smack on the head this time.

The prep: Not content with making me spend more on food than I usually do (though I'm never sad to shell out for good lamb), the Random Kitchen project is seriously upping my spend on kitchenware. To my shame, I don't possess a good, heavy lidded casserole dish, and frankly it's about time that changed, so I allow myself the low-level indulgence of a solid-looking thing from the Sainsbury's Collection. Should last a good few years, anyway.

Most of the ingredients need buying, actually, from the titular olives to the onion that I'm going to caramelise (because caramelised onions - not chutney - in a jar are the kind of thing that only exist at Waitrose, on the delicatessen shelves and in Nigella's happiest dreams). I find the remains of a jar of ground ginger at the back of the cupboard with a best before date of December 2009, so probably best to buy some more of that, and the one bottle of red wine we've got in the house is far too good to waste on cooking.

Basically it's a massively expensive trip to the supermarket all round, but the end result ought to be pretty decent, since the recipe basically involves lumping together a bunch of nice ingredients in a pot for two hours.

The making: Oops, I just gave away the method, didn't I? And indeed, once the onions are caramelised, they're put in the casserole along with the diced lamb, a drained jar of black olives, a drained jar of capers, a bulb's-worth of garlic cloves (left whole), and some ground cumin and ginger. Then the stock is added... wait, there is no stock. Instead, a whole bottle of red wine is added, and that's all the liquid we're using. Nigella, indulgent? Never!

The mixture is brought to the boil on the hob, the lid goes onto the dish, the dish goes into the oven for two hours or "until the lamb is tender", and that's it. I mean, honestly, the recipe's available online but there seems little point in sharing it here considering how straightforward it is. Still, by all means Google away if you want.

On inspection near the end of the cooking time, it becomes clear that the casserole's contents are still suspiciously on the liquid-y side, but it'd probably take another two hours in the oven for that issue to resolve itself (and the photo in the book does suggest that the lamb may be practising for its 50m swimming certificate). Instead, I prepare Nigella's proposed accompaniment - "a bowl of couscous studded with a can or two of chickpeas" - and the not-actually-a-tagine (can we call it a "fauxgine"?) is ready to serve.

Mmm, fat globules

The eating: The thing about cooking meat in wine and very little else is that it tends to leave the meat susceptible to, well, discolouration. Now, I've had some unusual experiences with eating lamb in my time...

Malmö, don't ever change

...but even I've yet to encounter a recipe seemingly designed to turn the meat the purply-pink colour of liver. That's what happens here, and it isn't a great start.

Once that aesthetic hurdle is overcome, however, the lamb itself is perfectly cooked and falls apart at the merest touch of the fork. Top marks on the tenderness front. Elsewhere, the olives and capers add an unusual tang to the dish that sets this aside from your average Sunday stew, although I'm not convinced that they and the uncrushed garlic really blend together or infuse the liquid with much of their flavour in the process - this is less a cohesive dish, more a collection of nice things floating in a vat of wine.

The excess liquid that I was concerned about is soaked up by the couscous...

(well, mostly)

...but there's no denying that the red wine is the dominant flavour here, and that's a bit of a problem. Maybe it's because I'm a non-drinker these days - Sam has far fewer objections on this front - but it's all a little overpowering. It almost reminds me of red wine fondue in that respect, where you cook chunks of meat in a mini-saucepan of wine-heavy broth right there on the table in front of you - although the key word there is broth, i.e. not just wine.

My conclusion is that Nigella should have followed the lead of Monty Python's viking-plagued café owner and called this "Wine, Wine, Wine, Wine, Lamb and Wine Tagine" for greater accuracy.

Still, don't get me wrong: this is a pretty enjoyable eat that absolutely can't be faulted for its simplicity, and I'm very fond of lots of the things involved. In fact, I'd gladly make it again, going 50-50 on wine and lamb stock this time (and slightly cutting down the volume of liquid overall), and see how that turns out. Seems like a good excuse to get some more use out of that new dish, if nothing else...

One-word verdict: Hic!

Week 28: Saffron Haddock with Crushed Potatoes and Asparagus

The book: Masterclass (James Martin)

The recipe: p48, "Saffron Haddock with Crushed Potatoes and Asparagus"

Sam's mum is in town for the weekend, and while I wouldn't normally subject a guest to the Random Kitchen experience, both mother and son seem keen to take the plunge. Still, I'm secretly relieved when random.org selects something relatively sensible (in terms of both book and recipe).

I wondered whether last week's post about Swedish Cakes and Cookies would miraculously conjure up something from those pages this time round, but apparently it's the invocation of saffron that does the trick. It's not something I've used in cooking for the longest time, but I'm curious to see how it matches with a flavour sponge like white fish.

The prep: I need to buy pretty much everything for this dish, but it's all fairly standard stuff. My only concern, given the past issues I've had with sourcing things in Lewisham on a Sunday, is the saffron - but no, there it is in Sainsbury's, more expensive than gold (and frankly far more relevant to my life).

I've already resolved to significantly up the quantity of potatoes - it seems the more ambitious the cookbook, the more measly the portion sizes, largely since they seem to expect you to be serving up the dish in question as part of a three-course meal. We've bought a cheesecake for afters but that's as far as it goes, so a bit more bulk wouldn't go amiss.

The making: The fish for this week's selection is to be poached in saffron-infused milk. I might expect this to happen in a pan, but James Martin requires me to use a heavy-bottomed roasting tin on the hob top instead. Well, if you say so...

Whether pan or roaster, it turns out that the main challenge throughout this process is to stop the milk from bubbling up to the point where it gets an icky skin, while making sure it's still hot enough to actually do something.

In any case, "two good pinches" of saffron slowly start their work of turning the milk a warm yellow colour...

That's about half of it, my pinches aren't that puny

...and once that goal is achieved, the haddock fillets are added and cooked "for 3-4 minutes" before being removed from the heat and left to sit in the saffron milk until being reheated shortly before serving. I opt to extend that "3-4 minutes" because it's quite evident that the fish has barely really started cooking at this point, and I have no great desire to poison the mother-in-law.

Next, "400g" (lol) of new potatoes are boiled, drained, and crushed together with some double cream and chopped chives and dill "without mashing them". James recommends that I do this using a fork, but I want to serve this up before Week 29, and the gentle deployment of a masher turns out to be absolutely fine for achieving the desired consistency.

Then (and I dispute this order of events - surely it should have been "meanwhile"?) another pot of salted water is brought to the boil and some asparagus spears are cooked "for 2 minutes or until tender". So for 4-5 minutes, then. James Martin seems intent on making me serve up underdone food today, but it's no use, mister - I can see right through your ruse.

The asparagus spears are drained, returned to the pan and nicely buttered up. At this point, I'm supposed to put them on the plate already then reheat the haddock, but again, that seems a bit illogical timing-wise unless your plates are pre-heated to the point of being molten. Anyway, I've done the reheating in the meantime, so the components are duly ready to be assembled simultaneously - and the whole thing ends up being a remarkably close approximation of the picture in the book and everything. Yay!

The eating: I've been a little sceptical about the saffron's presence throughout, and indeed I'm not convinced it adds a huge amount to the fish flavour-wise - it's quite a subtle taste anyway, I suppose, but I don't see how the poaching process is meant to infuse much of that in the haddock, and indeed it doesn't really. Still, the occasional blast from a clinging saffron strand does provide some welcome variety.

It would have made more sense if, instead of using double cream, the potatoes had been smashed together with the saffron-infused milk. Sure, the whole dish might have become overwhelmingly yellow as a result, but it seems a waste to have simply discarded all that saffrony goodness. Oh well - the potatoes are still excellent, the chives and dill giving them a perfectly summery flavour on the weekend when the British weather finally turned for the good.

And the asparagus is, well, asparagus.

It's literally only now, writing this, that I realise I was supposed to buy smoked haddock. D'oh! No wonder it looked a bit more yellow in the book. Although I suspect the smokiness would have minimised the saffron's contribution to the flavour experience even further.

Anyway, heck, we still enjoyed it. Random Kitchen has taken on board a willing victim participant and passed this particular test with flying colours. My reservations about the curious methods and timings employed by James Martin notwithstanding, this is a fine meal to serve up on a sunny July evening, and we are all most satisfied.

It's going to be back to something like "Vegetables For One" next week, isn't it?

One-word verdict: Summery.

The books: Swedish Cakes and Cookies (Sju sorters kakor)

More than halfway through the Random Kitchen project, and we're still waiting for a few of the 22 participating cookbooks to come out of the random number generator.

Everyday Novelli remains conspicuous by its absence (to my relief but some readers' frustration!), while two of my three "snipped out of newspapers and printed off the internet" folders remain as yet untapped.

The greatest source of sadness for me, though, is that we haven't yet had an encounter with Swedish Cakes and Cookies.

The original-language version of the book, Sju sorters kakor, is a classic that belongs in every Swedish home. It takes its name from the tradition that every good hostess of a coffee afternoon should serve up at least seven different types of biscuit, cake or cookie to accompany the black stuff.

And if you know anything about Swedes, you'll know they take their fika or coffee culture very seriously indeed.

Malmö, 2013: Even the Eurovision press centre enjoys a good fika

I'm half-Swedish on my mother's side, and there was (still is) a big community of Anglo-Scandinavian families in the north-east of England - so there was no shortage of opportunities to flex those nascent baking skills and get busy in the kitchen when I was a young 'un.

My eager hands (and sweet tooth) were only too happy to get involved in mixing and making everything from saffron buns for the annual Lucia celebrations to what would become known in subsequent editions of Sju sorters kakor as the - shall we say - slightly more politically correct "chocolate balls".

Oops

The English version of Sju sorters kakor, which I picked up a few years ago, is really not bad. As the title suggests, it's geared firmly towards a US audience - the back cover even proudly boasts "Sweden's classic guide comes to America" - although the quantities used in the recipes remain pleasingly Scandinavian (flour and sugar are measured in decilitres - of course!).

In any case, for all I do have a certain understanding of Swedish, it's a lot safer not to have to translate things on the hop while attempting to navigate my way through a recipe, so the English-language versions are a godsend in that respect. Some of the names of the various goodies are translated a little idiosyncratically - I probably wouldn't have thought of my favourite havreflarn as "syrup lace cookies", for instance - but most are accompanied by some kind of illustration so it's easy enough to work out what item from the IKEA café/shop they're meant to be replicating.

And really, everything you'd want is in here, from arrak/punsch rolls (also known as "vacuum cleaners", apparently - why wouldn't they be?) and the delightfully evocative dreams, through to that recent Bake-Off favourite, the mighty princess torte. (My birthday cake several times when I was young. And they say only children are spoilt...)

Plus there are some useful tips for rolling tricky pastry, getting your bun dough to rise properly, decorating with chocolate - basically all the techniques that any self-respecting Swedish chef should know.

The original in situ, price tag and all

Now, to be perfectly honest: if the ultimate purpose of the Random Kitchen is to get more use out of my cookbooks, I can't claim that Swedish Cakes and Cookies is exactly gathering dust.

But it does contain nearly 300 (!) recipes for all kinds of sweet pieces of my heritage, so even now I've barely really made a dent, sticking to my old favourites and not venturing too far from the beaten track. (Plus I'm about to start training for a half-marathon, so I can cope with a few more calories in my diet...)

Here's hoping, then, that there'll be - if not seven - then at least one type of Swedish goodie coming my way before the random year is out.

Week 27: 'Arriba' Speedy Gonzales Tortillas

The book: Ainsley Harriott's Meals In Minutes

The recipe: p64, "'Arriba' Speedy Gonzales Tortillas"

Be honest, with a recipe name like that I didn't even need to tell you it was Ainsley, did I? Twee and punny he may be, but Meals In Minutes is a bit of a classic and is among my most well-thumbed cookbooks, with everything from the Mexican tortilla "cheesecake" to an inauthentic but quick take on paella getting reasonably frequent kitchen airtime.

So will this week's random choice transcend its frankly awful name and prove to be another winner from the Ainsley stable?

Who nose?

The prep: There are always kidney beans in the cupboard, because you never know when you might need to make an emergency vat of chilli. Indeed, the shopping list for this one turns out to be a modest one, mainly encompassing tortillas (I go for Tesco's seeded tortilla wraps, largely because they look quite funky) and store-bought guacamole, which I am excited to discover now comes in a squeezy bottle - though I'm a little sceptical about the extent to which the properties of "chunky" and "squeezy" will reconcile.

Meanwhile, the recipe wants me to use Red Leicester (this doesn't feel entirely authentic) but cheddar's what I've already got in, so cheddar it is - I'm not made of money.

The making: An onion, some garlic and cumin are fried up then the kidney beans are stirred through and the mixture is "roughly crushed". We're talking refried beans here, basically - never a bad thing. It's only at this point in proceedings that I properly register the fact that the recipe is a vegetarian one, which tends to make things quicker and easier on the cooking front, I suppose.

Anyway, next the tortillas are briefly heated to make them easier to handle, then the assembly phase begins. The guacamole (perfectly squeezy, as it transpires) is spread over the tortillas, some shredded lettuce and seeded, diced tomatoes are scattered on top, then the bean mix is dolloped on top of that. Last but certainly not least, the grated cheese joins the party, and we're ready to roll! I MEAN LITERALLY.

Once the tortillas are rolled, Ainsley requires me to slice them in half diagonally. This seems like a terrible idea - surely everything will just fall straight out of them? - but I'm keen to stick to the recipe instead of doing something more sensible and intuitive, so what the heck.

There's no particularly elegant way of arranging them on the plate, and the slicing process requires some judicious use of toothpicks to hold the tortillas together, so the overall aesthetic effect could be rather more pleasing. Though it obviously doesn't help that at least one of my diagonal cuts was somewhat rubbish too. Still, there's the finished product in all its glory:

Unevenly done

The eating: As predicted, the things are hard to handle and basically fall apart the moment you look at them, but they're damn tasty. Of course they are, we're talking about refried beans and guacamole and cheese and other good stuff!

It's a simple recipe (heck, it's barely even a recipe really - you could at least have required the guacamole to be home-made, Ainsley), but I don't miss the meat at all; if anything, the fat from it would have made the tortillas even more liable to disintegrate.

And as always seems to be the case with anything (pseudo-)Mexican, what initially looks like a lot of food ends up slipping down very easily.

I am really very full afterwards. But there must be something to be said for it, because the Friday night feast fuels me to a new parkrun PB the next morning. Speedy Gonzales indeed...

One-word verdict: 'Arriba'.