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.

Week 47: Sichuan Orange Beef

The book: Chinese Food Made Easy (Ching-He Huang)

The recipe: p. 42, "Sichuan Orange Beef"

Age and achievement are a funny thing. While I'm still reeling from my own 38th birthday, Wikipedia informs me that Ching-He Huang was born exactly nine days earlier than me in that fine autumn of 1978. And sure, she may have "become the face of Chinese cookery internationally through her TV shows, books, tableware range and involvement in many high-profile campaigns and causes" - but does she have a blog in which she uses a random number generator for the purposes of wilful culinary self-harm? I think not.

If my memory (OK, my search function) serves me right, we haven't delved into the pages of this book since way back in Week 6, where it delivered a punchy lunchtime treat. This time round we're in main course territory, and Ching introduces her recipe with evocative talk of "dried tangerine peel and the citrusy-numbing hot Sichuan peppercorns" and the delicious flavour they bring to Sichuan cooking. Sounds pretty promising - let's see how it equates to the plate, shall we?

The prep: I'm initially concerned, as the ingredient list suggests that a trip to the local Chinese supermarket might be required - and on the day in question, the local Chinese supermarket is still firmly on the wrong side of this:

Oops.

To my surprise, however, there's nothing that can't be obtained at Lewisham Sainsbury's, including shiitake mushrooms and the "optional" (ahahaha) jasmine rice - though it probably helps that I've still got Shaohsing rice wine in the cupboard from those Week 6 adventures.

Otherwise all I need to do is select my preferred interpretation of the recipe's "frying steak or fillet steak". Fillet seems a bit of an extravagance for a meal like this, plus the previous day's "dinner" was an endless supply of Virgin East Coast sandwiches, muffins, biscuits, muffins, crisps and muffins, so something more substantial seems advisable. As such - and since, dear reader, I like big butts and I cannot lie - I settle on a couple of rump steaks, thin enough to absorb the flavours and allow for quick cooking but thick enough to satisfy.

The making: Being a BBC tie-in, the recipe is available right here, although there are slight differences in terms of both ingredients (white pepper here, black pepper in the book) and method. Since the Random Kitchen is all about my underused cookbooks, I'm sticking with what it says on the printed page, natch.

I start by mixing the rice wine with some light soy sauce, runny honey, orange juice (I'm assuming smooth not bitty) and freshly ground pepper, before adding the beef and leaving it to marinate for what ends up being about 20 minutes.

An absorbing sight

In the meantime, I cook the jasmine rice, dish it up and leave it in the oven on a plate-warming temperature - the recipe will later require me to cover the cooked steaks to keep them warm while finishing off the other ingredients, but I know from bitter experience that cold plates and hot steaks are a disappointing combination, so this seems a more promising approach. (Plus the rice is already sticky by definition, so a few minutes at 100-ish degrees will hardly change much.)

That done, a frying pan is heated until highly hot. I add oil followed by my substantial rump, which I've halved for ease of handling. The meat is cooked as preferred - a couple of minutes on either side in this case, for a medium-rare finish that'll be nicely medium by the time it's been kept warm for a bit.

#gaysteak #instarump #speedomeat

The remaining marinade is added for the last few seconds, bubbling up before reducing down, then I plate up the beef with the rice and pop it back into the warm oven.

The final stage is to cook the shiitake mushrooms in the same pan, so that they soak up all the remaining juices from the marinade. Once the mushrooms are softened, I throw in the "garnish" for a couple of seconds too, since I think it could benefit from absorbing some of the same flavours. The garnish in question is a peeled and segmented orange - the photo in the book suggests that the segments themselves should also be peeled, which I file firmly under "life's too short" - and a sliced spring onion (optional, but duh).

This is then assembled along with the steak and rice to produce a dish that looks uncannily like a chunk of beef smothered by various Asian and not-so-Asian toppings.

Colourful though

The eating: Broadly positive noises all round, though Sam is happier than I am. The impact of the honey/orange marinade is a bit sickly for my taste, failing to really cut through the flavour of the meat, but we're agreed that the mushrooms and spring onions work nicely (and that the orange segments are, well, a bit odd). For the most part, though, the dish seems to work mainly because it's a decent cut of meat cooked just right, and not because of anything Ching's recipe has added to proceedings.

This is when I realise what's missing. The intro to the recipe waxes lyrical about the tang of orange peel and the spice of peppercorns, so why aren't they used here? Anything along those lines - heck, even just some garlic or chilli - would offset the sweetness and give the dish a far more satisfactory kick. I'm not asking for it to be spicy per se, merely something other than only sweet. As it stands, though, it's just a fairly bland and uneventful steak and rice dish with some nice mushrooms on top.

Which is fine in itself - and it's a quick and easy dinner that certainly suits the "Made Easy" claim of the book's title - but I was expecting something a little more interesting after Week 6's taste explosion. I'd say "maybe next time", but time is something this project is rapidly running out of...

One-word verdict: Perfunctory.

Week 46: Avocados with Prawns 2 Ways

The book: How To Cheat At Cooking (Delia Smith)

The recipe: p. 88, "Avocados with Prawns 2 Ways"

"There are," Delia says in the introduction to this so-called recipe, "some quite ordinary yet lovely things that end up being overlooked because they are not fashionable." And if you think she's only talking about avocado and prawns, you're a less cynical reader than me.

To date, two themes have emerged from our encounters with Delia's controversial cookbook of cheatery: revivals of old-fashioned recipes, and shortcuts that don't actually save a great deal of time while certainly costing a great deal of money. So I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that this week's random.org selection fits the bill perfectly on both counts.

Never mind revivals, this dish really is more of a throwback to 1970s dinner parties, or perhaps a family meal at a Berni Inn (which I never actually experienced myself - we were more of a Harvester clan). I'm quite happy to let it scratch a lunchtime itch in this futuristic and frankly depressing year we call 2016, though - so let's see what tasty treats and pointless cheats Delia has in store for us this time.

And hey - it could always be worse.

The prep: The first problem with this recipe - and I really don't mean to be such a grouch, but it's amazing how many problems there are with Random Kitchen recipes - lies in the phrase "2 Ways". To my mind, that implies a plate featuring two different types of avocado/prawn concoction. As far as Delia's concerned, however, it means preparing the avocado and prawns either one way or the other.

Well, absolutely fuck that shit. I want to try both variants, so I double the quantities of everything on the ingredient list - that's avocados, limes, lettuce and the cheat de résistance, namely shop-bought prawn cocktail ("we've made it with Tesco Finest but any similar one is fine"). If you're starting to get the impression that this is going to be yet another "just chop and assemble some stuff" kind of recipe, you'd be right...

The recipe also calls for buttered slices of "traditional Irish wheaten loaf", which I choose to interpret as "whatever nice fresh bread I can actually get at the Lewisham Centre on a Sunday" (some vaguely sourdough-y seeded thing from M&S that turns out to be really, really good).

The making: "Making", hahahaha. Well, okay, there is some work involved. First, I have to empty the prawn cocktail into a bowl and add seasoning, a good pinch of cayenne pepper, some lime juice and some tomato ketchup (specifically organic, because it's important that tomatoes are raised in an environment where they can roam freely). Two points here: firstly, that's clearly going to make the whole thing far too liquidy for its intended purpose; and secondly, if you're going to make me add several ingredients to it anyway, why not just get me to make the prawn cocktail from scratch? IT'S NOT HARD.

Anyway, prawns duly sauced up, the first of the "2 Ways" turns out to be simply piling the mixture "into the halved avocado". The idea seems to be to scoop it into the hollow left by removing the stone, but that actually isn't a great deal of space for this quantity of prawn cocktail, so - as predicted - both prawns and sauce end up overflowing and spilling down the sides of the avocado halves. Good start.

The second of the "2 Ways" is slightly more involved. Lettuce is shredded and piled in the bottom of a glass (yes! A glass! How Come Dine With Me is that?). The contents of the second avocado are scooped out and cubed this time, then piled atop the lettuce, before the prawn cocktail mixture is piled on top of that. It's multi-layered-starter-tastic!

I mean, seriously

Both "Ways" are finished with a further sprinkling of cayenne, before being served with lime quarters to squeeze and a couple of slices of the buttered bread. I might have let the diner do the buttering to taste, but Delia's the boss, and in the 1970s (and at Maggie's caff in Lewisham in 2016, for that matter) tea comes with milk and bread comes already buttered.

And there we have it. Messy prawn cocktail in not one but two difficult-to-eat-while-not-actually-that-visually-impressive forms. Hurrah!

The eating: Let's get one thing out of the way - this is really nice. Of course it is! It's avocados, prawn cocktail and gnarly bread, three of life's better foodstuffs.

IT'S JUST SO POINTLESS.

Seriously though. Take shop-bought prawn cocktail - which isn't exactly cheap - and turn it into a sloppy mess that leads to presentation hiccups like the above, then serve it in arcane ways, only one of which we're apparently allowed to enjoy at the same time anyway? That isn't "cheating" at cooking, it's corrupting the meaning of cooking while simultaneously introducing random handicaps for no apparent reason.

And yet, and yet... this is so close to making sense. The glass-based variant, while kind of ludicrous, is actually a fairly easy way of making a cute-looking (if retro) starter or lunch, and even the other approach would work fine if you scooped out the avocado then reassembled its contents, diced, with the avocado shell as a receptacle and a layer of prawn cocktail on top. Still very 70s and all - just not, you know, immediately glooping its way down the sides because that's how gravity and viscosity work, Delia.

Would revisit, v. nice lunch, and yet somehow still: gaaaah.

One-word verdict: Tortuous.

Week 45: Aubergine Hummus

The book: Everyday Novelli

The recipe: p178, "Aubergine Hummus"

Dear readers: it's finally happened.

SOUND THE NOVELLI KLAXON!

And place your swans on high alert

It's the book that launched a thousand quips, not to mention inspiring what remains the most-read post of the Random Kitchen project to date. Forty-five long weeks we've waited for the random finger of fate to finally point its way. And now - now, at last, my friends - the moment has arrived.

While the likelihood of me having to lovingly feed a tub of mussels or hand-craft some sugary swan necks is statistically low, the possibility is very firmly on the table this week and the sense of peril is palpable. Which is why it's both a relief and a disappointment when random.org's choice ends up being fairly mundane. Heck, not only does the method involve a mere seven steps (practically a ready meal by Novelli standards), but aubergine hummus sounds like something I might actively want to eat. What is this sorcery?

I can only hope there are some arcane cooking techniques involved. Maybe I'll have to hand-rear a school of baby chickpeas.

Or a herd of lemons

The prep: For a relatively simple dip, the ingredients list is reassuringly lengthy (don't ever change, Jean-Christophe). In terms of herbs alone, we're talking fresh basil, coriander and thyme, which would seem to promise a bright and tasty end result. I'm a little puzzled by the need for "Cajun spices" as that doesn't seem especially Middle Eastern, but Sharwoods do a handy mix that shouldn't go to waste (potato wedges, baby!) so I don't resent having to shell out for it.

The only sticking point is the tahini. A mandatory feature of any hummus, the thick sesame seed paste is thin on the ground in Lewisham on this particular Sunday. The designated shelf at Sainsbury's is desolate and empty, and while you'd think one of the local Turkish supermarkets might come to my rescue, since they stock pretty much everything else in existence, I can't seem to find it and the staff are way too loudly busy for me to want to risk disturbing them.

On a hunch, I decide to pull out my phone and google to see what's actually in tahini... and, erm, turns out it really is just basically sesame seeds (toasting optional if preferable) and a splash of oil (even that's optional). I reckon I ought to be able to replicate that.

I'm a seedgrinder. In my sleep I grind my seeds

And so I can. The result isn't quite as smooth as shop-bought tahini, which may be because my blade isn't sharp enough or because I don't have the patience to add a few minutes to the blending time like I probably ought to, but it'll do for the job at hand.

The making: The oven is pre-heated. Two aubergines are cut in half - lengthways, though technically it doesn't specify - and laid out on baking sheets before being sprinkled with a diced garlic clove, a tablespoon of caster sugar and a teaspoon of the Cajun spices. Sprigs of the thyme are then laid on top before liberal quantities of olive oil are applied.

Oiled up and ready for action

The prepped aubergines are then covered with foil and baked in the oven "for 20-25 minutes, or until soft". I immediately identify two problems with this instruction: firstly, I always find aubergines take longer to cook than recipes think; and secondly, I always find foil-covered things take longer to cook than recipes think. True to form, it's probably closer to double that time (including a period of baking uncovered) before the aubergines are approaching the kind of scoopable softness the recipe demands. (Fuck's actual sake.)

Once the aubergines are removed from the oven and allowed to cool to a less finger-endangering temperature, the flesh is scooped out and blitzed in a food processor until smooth. Next, most of the remaining ingredients are added - that's 200g of cooked and drained chickpeas, a further two cloves of raw garlic, the home-made tahini, generous portions of chopped basil and coriander, and the juice of 1-2 lemons. "Blitz together until smooth", the recipe tells me, so I do.

The result is something that already looks pretty dippable to me, but that apparently isn't decadent enough, because I'm required to feed in up to 200ml of olive oil while the Kenwood's blades continue to do their thing. "You may not need all the oil," Novelli warns, and is he ever right. I'm barely at the 100ml point when it becomes clear that the contents of the food processor bowl are a bit more, well, liquid than I might want them to be. Not disastrously so - the consistency is still recognisably hummus-y - but christ only knows what it'd have been like with the full quantity of oil.

"Adjust the seasoning and chill until required" is the final instruction, in direct contravention of the introductory claim that this is "delicious served warm with a crusty, rustic bread of your choice". Your mind, J-C: make it up.

The chilling would probably give it a more solid consistency, granted, but recent proximity to oven time means we're still in "warm" territory here, so I take advantage of that by decanting the hummus into a serving bowl, doing a half-arsed presentation job with some black pepper and a slug of extra virgin olive oil for good measure, then serving it as part of a lazy dinner that we'll call "Lidl mezze" because that's exactly what it is. (Although the crusty, rustic bread of my choice - an oven-warmed kalamata olive loaf - is from Sainsbury's. And rather good it is too.)

Go on, you try making it look un-gloopy

The eating: You might feel there's a cynical tone creeping into my words today, so let me make one thing clear: this is pretty good. The herbs are present and correct (visually as well as on the taste buds), the lemon juice gives it a fresh tang, and while there's a bit of a sesame seed aftertaste to the whole thing, I'm going to put that down to my failure to make Mediterranean-standard tahini rather than a flaw in the recipe itself.

If you think "aubergine hummus" sounds suspiciously like baba ganoush with some chickpeas added, you're probably not far wrong. It could actually cope with more chickpeas to give it greater substance - as it stands, it's closer to something you'd spread on your bread than something into which you could successfully dip a carrot stick or a grissino - but the taste and texture are authentic and convincing even if the end result is a bit drippy.

The trouble with aubergines is that they don't really have much of a flavour in their own right, so they tend to absorb what's around them - and one thing that's around them here is garlic. That becomes increasingly evident as I return to the leftovers in the following days. (Sorry Sam.)

As a dish prepared fresh, served warm and polished off in a single sitting, however, I'd quite happily serve this up to my guests with a few tweaks for experience (roast the garlic and use less oil, mainly). "Everyday" it isn't - who can be bothered, frankly? - but it's a damn sight less wilfully complex than a lot of what this now-legendary book has to offer. And for that bullet dodged, I am thankful.

One-word verdict: Sloppy.

Week 44: Sausages with Onion Gravy and Perfect Mash

The book: Riverford Farm Cook Book

The recipes: p257, "Sausages with Onion Gravy"; p288, "Perfect Mash"

A bit later than planned due to the mind-bending awfulness of real-life events, and I can't claim to be entirely in the mood for writing this even now - but in the face of our relative powerlessness to change things in the wider world, perhaps the only reasonable approach is to throw ourselves into harmless distractions like randomised cookery. A kind of self-imposed "bread and circuses", if you will, albeit I don't think even I own a cookbook that would require me to construct a big top for lions and trapeze artists. (Though I wouldn't put it past Everyday Novelli.)

Even before the triumph of the orange-faced fascist, I wasn't altogether sure how the Random Kitchen project would pan out this week considering we tend to roll the dice on a Sunday. This Sunday gone was Sam's birthday, and I didn't know if I had the heart to subject him to whatever the random gods threw our way, so I gave him the right of veto - no skipping the recipe itself, of course (rules are rules), but if it was something uninspiring or actively awful then we could at least hold it over until Monday and go for a Rox Burger instead.

And I fully expected that veto to be exercised when the Riverford Farm Cook Book ended up being the chosen tome. After all, what kind of birthday gift could possibly be hidden in its reliably underwhelming pages? Okra pudding? Deep-fried nettles? Sprouts à l'orange?

Oh. "Sausages with Onion Gravy".

Cinderella, you shall go to the ball! Hic.

In addition to sounding suspiciously un-recipe-like (how many more times during this project are we going to encounter an author trying to pass off "put some stuff with some other stuff" as an actual recipe?), if we're being honest, this one sounds suspiciously un-vegetable-like too. You know, what with the sausages and all. In fairness, though, Riverford do sell organic meats, cheeses and the like alongside their headline veg box range - and insofar as there's any cooking involved in this recipe at all, it certainly involves a vegetable, namely the humble onion. So, taking on board the in-recipe suggestion of serving these bangers with the (ahem) "Perfect Mash" from later in the book (if only to give me more to write about), I set about whipping up an acceptably hearty autumnal birthday feast.

The prep: It'd be wrong to penny-pinch when giving someone your birthday sausage - and for a Spalding boy, it has to be Lincolnshires, of course. Elsewhere, it turns out I'm doing this recipe something of a disservice by disputing its complexity; the gravy does involve quite a long ingredient list, though most of them are store cupboard staples in one form or another, so that's useful.

The only thing I need to buy is the titular onions. I'm not ashamed to admit it takes me a while to parse the line "4 large onions (use half red onions, if possible)". What, I think to myself, are "half red onions"? Is this like semi-dried tomatoes? Are they a pale pink colour like shallots? How come I've never seen them in the supermarket before?

C'mon, brain.

With that linguistic puzzle duly unravelled - and the results ignored, since I'm going to use red onions almost exclusively (they're on offer at the local Asda and I love them, so nerr) - we're off and ready to go.

The making: Butter and oil are heated in a large frying pan. The sausages are added, cooked until browned all over, then set aside. Next, the thinly sliced onions are added to the pan and cooked, covered, over a super-low heat for 45 minutes, during which time Sam's eyes start to sting like crazy and eventually pop out of their sockets altogether.

The introduction to the recipe does state that it "includes generous amounts [of gravy] to satisfy even the most diehard fanatic", and I'm starting to see why...

That's a lot of onions

...but the slow process of stirring and cooking (during which the virtues of using a non-stick pan become evident) soon cuts the onions down to size:

That's better

A dessertspoon of sugar is stirred through to help the onions caramelise a little, then a dessertspoon of flour is stirred through to help the onions thicken a little. 400ml of beef stock and 100ml of red wine are the next additions ("chicken stock" and "beer" are offered as alternatives here, which: nope) before the sausages are returned to the pan.

At this stage they're practically swimming...

Glub

...but 20 minutes of simmering really does reduce down the liquid and concentrate the flavour like the recipe suggests, and pretty soon we're ready to roll. The final touch is the addition of a tablespoon each of mustard, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce. This ought to give things a nice kick, and I am definitely on board with this approach.

In the meantime, I've been making the "Perfect Mash" (a bold claim, Riverford), which basically involves a ratio of 10 parts cooked and mashed/riced potato to 1 part milk, 1 part melted butter and 1 part - oh yes - double cream.

in me now pls

You can probably work out the "method" part of the recipe for yourself, so I won't insult your intelligence by regurgitating it here. Since this all seems heroically unhealthy, I decide to quickly prep some green beans in a vain attempt to salvage some kind of nutritional value from the day (though I'm acutely aware that this goes against every principle of birthday indulgence).

The eating: Well now. There isn't an easy way to make this kind of thing look elegant on a plate - bangers and mash can only be arranged in so many ways, after all, most of them not especially pleasing on the eye. Add in the fact that there is a lot of gravy - I wouldn't even necessarily call it "gravy" any more, it's really just red onion chutney but a bit wetter - and the presentation side of things is never going to be an aesthete's delight.

See?

It's basically just a pile of stuff. But oh! what stuff. The mash, the mash is good. The mash is creamy. I don't know if I'd call it "perfect". But the onion chutney gravy? It's perfect. Just gloriously melty and gooey and packed with a richness and depth of flavour that takes the meal from comfort food to a whole new level of indulgence. Combined (OK, "smushed together") with the mash, the end result is plain lovely, a warm woolly sweater of a meal for a murky November evening.

Since you can't really go wrong with sausages, mash and gravy, I was expecting something great but predictable from this week's choice (like the key change before the final chorus of "Fångad av en stormvind", say), but this is actively epic. Against all odds, I am very, very impressed with something from the pages of the Riverford Farm Cook Book! And all it took was the addition of some meat.

But no, seriously, the vegetable really is the star here - it is, in the parlance of my native region, proper cush. Slow cooking, kids - it's the way forward (and it's one reason I'm glad we do Random Kitchen at the weekend when I actually have time for this shit).

One-word verdict: Celebratory.