Week 3: Tomato, Fennel and Feta Soup

The book: A Soup For Every Day (The New Covent Garden Food Co.)

The recipe: p262, "Tomato, Fennel and Feta Soup"

A Soup For Every Day is a rare example of a cookbook in my collection that actually gets pretty decent use. Even without the involvement of randomness, I largely ignore its calendrical structure, though; for example, this week's recipe is on the page marked "September 13th", which I acknowledge means some of the key ingredients are currently out of season - but then that's precisely why we have aircraft to help us rack up horrific food miles, isn't it? Modern life FTW <3

The book was a family Christmas gift a few years back, along with a Morphy Richards soup maker that has proved to be something of a godsend for a hungry homeworker like me. Stock up on cheap veg from Lewisham market, chop it all up, then sit back and enjoy that lunchtime goodness after a mere 22 minutes in what can only be described as a giant soup kettle:

As this week's chosen recipe involves multiple phases and that's not the soup maker's strong point, I decided to go the conventional route and make it in a pan instead. (Still used the kettle for blending, though - beats faffing around with the food processor.)

The prep: Mainly fridge and store-cupboard staples here, though tracking down sundried tomato paste proved to be surprisingly tricky considering I live in an area that's supposedly mid-gentrification. Like last week, doing my shopping on a Sunday doesn't help matters, but them's the breaks.

I opted for some nice vine tomatoes, as well as splashing out on quite expensive Actual Feta instead of supermarket-brand "salad cheese" (ahem). Though I do wonder whether there's much point in chucking high-end ingredients into something that's essentially going to end up as a bowl of mushy red liquid whatever you do with it.

Like quite a few of the Covent Garden recipes, this is notable for being a soup that doesn't use stock cubes just for the sake of it. I broadly approve - I'd far rather control the salt content myself and let the flavour and seasoning come from the ingredients wherever possible (a recipe containing feta is hardly going to be short on saltiness, after all).

The making: A diced potato, a chopped onion, tomato purée, garlic and a small amount of the sliced fennel are heated in a geet big pan until nicely soft. Caster sugar and white wine vinegar are added and boiled down slightly, then several chopped tomatoes (unpeeled - surely that's asking for trouble?),  sundried tomato paste and water are added.

After a good slow simmer for 30 minutes, the contents of the pan are blended, then the remaining fennel slices are added along with some cubes of feta. The recipe calls for a mere 50g of feta for a recipe that claims to feed four people, but obviously I use more, because feta.

I have no idea, I just googled "feta meme"

Another ten minutes of simmering to soften the fennel and melt the feta slightly, and we're done! A "rustic roll" (again, ahem) from Sainsbury's is the accompaniment of choice.

The eating: Fennel is great. There's an evocative recipe called "Devil's Fennel" in The Silver Spoon that I love, in which chunks of fennel are slow-cooked with anchovies and mustard. But of course I almost certainly won't get to write about that here.

Anyway, my point is that the fennel and feta flavours are what lifts this from the ordinary, giving it a subtle tartness and a sharp edge that work really nicely in combination with the robust tomato base - it's surprisingly fresh on the palate for something that feels like it's going to be quite heavy. That also means it tastes a lot less tomato-ey than the orange-redness of its appearance might suggest:

Now if you're thinking that's not the world's most attractive soup, you'd be right - the late-added slices of fennel and cubettes of feta aren't exactly designed for elegant visual impact, and the mouthfeel (box 4 on your Random Kitchen Buzzword Bingo card, folks!) is a little odd and lumpy. But at least there aren't any bits of tomato skin floating around in there as I'd feared - the long, slow cooking time ensures that even they end up being successfully blended. In any case, the flavour more than makes up for any shortcomings on the texture side.

At the end of the day, though, it's still just a soup. Indeed, after three weeks, I'm starting to realise that random.org seems determined to give me a lot of

• things that don't look particularly thrilling in photos;
• things that aren't particularly hard to make; and
• things with quite a lot of red in them.

Whether this reflects the uninspired nature of my cookbook collection or is just plain bad luck, I suppose only further throws of the dice will tell. It's all been nice enough, though - no disasters so far - and the overall quality trend is an upward one, so I look forward to whatever next week may bring.

Maybe I'll even be allowed a different colour or two.

One-word verdict: Tart.

Week 2: Slow-Roast Tomatoes, Goat's Cheese and Mint Salad

The book: Nigella Express

The recipe: p127, "Slow-Roast Tomatoes, Goat's Cheese and Mint Salad"

When this blog came up in conversation over a post-parkrun coffee on a snowy Sunday morning, we said it'd be nice if the fairies of fortune took the wintry weather into account and made this week's choice something hearty, like a pie or a stew. Inevitably, then, I shouted the randomly generated numbers through into the kitchen later that day so that Sam could look up the selected recipe, only to be greeted with the mournful response: "That's just a picture of some salad."

Flick back from p129 to the page containing the actual recipe, and it didn't sound too bad. It was lunchtime and we needed something light (insofar as anything involving goat's cheese can ever be described as "light"), and Nigella Express counts as one of the least-used cookbooks on the Random Kitchen shelf, so the choice was very much in keeping with the purpose of the exercise.

I'm not particularly fond of Nigella and her style of televisual delivery, though I concede I'm probably not the target audience for her assets. Still, underused though my copy may be, Nigella Express is responsible for introducing sesame oil, honey and soy sauce-glazed cocktail sausages to my life (and, subsequently, to party guests on numerous occasions), so it was really about time I gave it the honour of delving into its pages some more. 

The prep: Mostly fresh ingredients, of course, so a trip to the shops beckoned. The goat's cheese needed to be the ultra-soft variety - you know the type, with an almost mousse-like consistency for maximum dollopability. I opted for baby spinach leaves as the salad base, though in hindsight one of those supermarket watercress/rocket/spinach mixes would probably have made things more interesting.

That took care of the green and the white, but it's the red where the only complexity in the recipe comes in. Nigella calls for the reader to make their own sunblush tomatoes, a process that involves heating an oven, switching it off, then leaving a tray of herbed- and oil-up toms in there "overnight or for a day". Which, let's be honest:

Having said that, I'm sure the results would have been considerably better than the rather average supermarket deli counter tomatoes I ended up using - while certainly preferable to sundried tomatoes from the jar, which wouldn't have been juicy or sweet enough for the purpose, they were still a notable step down from my original plan, which was to get my semi-dried tomato fix from Lewisham's own slice of Italian heaven that is Gennaro's delicatessen.

Except Gennaro's is closed on Sundays, isn't it? #firstworldproblems, there. 

The making: Well, it's a salad. The Random Kitchen experiment is yet to pose any real problems where skill levels are concerned.

The spinach leaves are scattered across the dish as a base, then knifetip-sized dollops of goat's cheese are scattered here and there. The tomatoes are scattered on top, before a whisked-up blend of extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice is drizzled over and around the creation as it stands. Then to finish, as the recipe name suggests, a scattering of chopped mint. (It's a whole lot of scattering and a bit of drizzling, basically.) 

Et voilà:

See? It's a salad.

The eating: The tanginess of the goat's cheese and the acid pang of the tomatoes are the main flavours here, particularly since the quantity of mint involved doesn't seem to make much of an impression - I'd use a lot more next time. If you're like Sam and tomatoes aren't your favourite thing in the world, this salad won't be either (and doubly so if you're weirded out because it ends up leaving the inside of your mouth really dry for some reason). Whereas if you're me, you'll probably really like it, dry mouth and all.

Still, though: being essentially just a bunch of fresh ingredients slung together, the recipe lives and dies on the quality of those ingredients, and I'm the kind of person who finds it hard to justify spending delicatessen amounts of money on "just" a salad when I could be buying half a dozen bags of Tangfastics from Poundland for the same outlay.

So no complaints about random.org's choice this week - and Nigella Express certainly lives up to its billing when it comes to speed - but I'd need this to be a whole lot more special before I'd dare to serve it up to guests ahead of those sinful cocktail sausages.

One-word verdict: Tangy.

Week 1: Chicken in Tomato and Mushroom Sauce

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

The recipe: p137, "Chicken in Tomato and Mushroom Sauce"

Oh boy. My first cookery post in this series, and random.org could hardly have chosen something less inspiring - a pedestrian-sounding recipe from a deliberately basic cookbook. But hey, that's the nature of the game! And who knows, maybe my trusty old student companion How To Boil An Egg will deliver something surprisingly decent and show those celebrity chefs with their lucrative book deals a thing or two?

The prep: As you'd expect, nothing complex required here. Chicken breasts or thighs (I went with the former), onions, mushrooms, tomato purée, a bunch of store cupboard seasonings, and that's your lot. The inclusion of garlic powder is perhaps the most notable studenty throwback; I'm not sure I've owned any this side of Y2K. Worse still, Lewisham Sainsbury's was experiencing something of a shortage when I popped in yesterday, so I had to make do with garlic purée - the first Random Kitchen compromise, albeit probably also something of an improvement...

The making: The retro vibe continues. I'm no health freak, but I've never been one for pan-frying chicken - too much hassle for too little in the way of obvious gain, especially since the arrival of the Foreman Grill (and especially especially the Foreman Grill with dishwasher-friendly detachable plates. Seriously, few things in life have ever made me happier).

As I start following the recipe I'm immediately reminded of another reason I don't fry chicken, as drops of hot oil and butter proceed to fly everywhere throughout the 15-20 minutes I'm required to tend to the pan, thoroughly spattering my arms (ouch), my glasses (wah), the ENTIRE hob top and, with more than a hint of irony, the hood of the nearby Foreman grill. My poor baby. :(

Once nicely browned and done through, the chicken is set aside and covered to keep warm, then the onions, garlic and mushroom are fried up gently before tomato purée, chicken stock and herbs and seasoning are added and simmered down to a sauce-like consistency. All really very straightforward - the only challenge is remembering to double all of the quantities in Jan's modest "Serves 1" recipe. I take her advice and assemble a rudimentary bed of brown basmati rice and some buttered green beans to accompany this student feast. And then, realising this has all left me feeling thoroughly uninspired, I dispense with any notions of food presentation and simply slop it all over the rice to form a glorious heap of 1970s brown-ness.

The eating: I mean, it's fine, you know? It's meat in a simple sauce, so it's never going to be too awful. Sam points out that the chicken is rather bland compared with the marinated stuff I tend to stick on the Foreman, although the frying process does mean it's decently moist and juicy. And while there's plenty of the mushroomy sauce to smother the chicken and the rice (you can barely see them in the photo!), the tomato purée and dried herbs mean the broad flavour palate is more "Iceland pizza topping" than anything I'll be rushing to repeat or emulate.

Still, I'd have been proud enough to tuck into this in my Lawrence/Dalton Tower student kitchen (pre-demolition, natch), and it certainly wasn't an unpleasant experience, just a very solid 5/10 kind of affair - essentially exactly the kind of thing I might rustle up if I was lacking kitchen inspiration one evening after work, only less good. But also less complex, which is the entire raison d'être of a book like How To Boil An Egg, so it's hard to quibble.

Anyway, for all this chance-based 2016 challenge is about accepting the rough with the smooth, the random fairies had better come up with something a bit more interesting next time or I'll have to rename the blog The Bland-om Kitchen. (Yes, I went there. What of it?)

One-word verdict: Fine.

The books: How To Boil An Egg

I promised I'd be punctuating the actual cookery posts in this series by taking a closer look at some of the cookbooks in my collection. In fact, I'm going to start with just such an introduction.

Book #5 on the Random Kitchen shelf is How To Boil An Egg ("...and 184 other simple recipes for one") by Jan Arkless, originally published in 1986.

I said that some of my books had a story behind them, and this is one of them. It's a fairly obvious one, really, given the nature of the tome: this was one of several (cook)books I was given by family members - in this case, my uncle and aunt - when I left the familiar surroundings of Newcastle and ventured forth to Aston University in September 1997 as a fresh-faced young thing with shoulder-length hair and little to no aptitude in the kitchen.

It's the only one of those books I still own, but not because of the recipes it contains. They're mostly fairly pedestrian and unadventurous affairs, quite rightly aimed at the novice chef with a limited store cupboard, even more limited fridge space and - frankly - a limited budget too. Being a black-and-white paperback with no illustrations, it's hardly one to get your tastebuds racing, though its modest dimensions make it ideal for schlepping around various student accommodations (and there's no need to worry about slopping ingredients all over it).

No, the reason I've kept hold of How To Boil An Egg, all the way through stints in Birmingham, Mainz, Hamburg and now a decade in London, is summed up by these words from the preface: "Other cookery books assume some basic knowledge of cooking techniques, but in this book I have assumed none as I wrote it specifically for the person who knows absolutely nothing or very little about cooking or meal planning." (Jan's italics, not mine!)

That's precisely what I was as an 18-year-old, and even as I've gained kitchen experience and confidence over the years, there remain times when I don't necessarily know how best to simply prepare a certain vegetable or deal with certain basic cooking techniques that I don't actually deploy all that often (poaching an egg, prepping liver, that kind of thing). And sometimes a reminder of something you do know is also very useful! As promised, this book treats the reader not as an idiot but very much as a novice - no corners are cut, no assumptions are made, everything is spelled out in easy and friendly terms, and as such it's the perfect little guide to have close at hand.

So if you have a family member or friend who's soon to fly the family nest, I would firmly recommend you arm them with this book - although it must be said that ready meals and own-brand "helping hand" products have become much better, cheaper and more plentiful than when I first did the same back in 1997! Anyone who already has a decent amount of kitchen proficiency will likely find the content patronisingly simple in places - but in terms of learning the basics of How Food Actually Works, it's a great starting point.

Whether it contains any recipes that will do justice to the Random Kitchen concept is, of course, an entirely different matter. Though something tells me we might soon find out...

Introducing the gang

These are my cookbooks.

Not a vast collection, I'll grant you, and most of them are a little grubby and food-spattered from living on the worktop where all the dinner prep takes place.

Some would say a cookbook with stains is a cookbook that's been used well. That may be true, but the simple fact is this: I don't use my cookbooks anywhere near enough. I love whipping up something tasty in the evening, and I'm lucky enough to work from home, giving me time to shop and prepare in between stints at the translation coalface - but I tend to fall back on the same half-dozen staple meals, time and time again, while all those lovely books just gather dust.

So my New Year's resolution for 2016 is a simple one. I'm going to use the power of chance to force me to make better use of my cookbook collection. Because I'm not only a keen chef, but also a total nerd, once a week I'll be using random.org to select a book from the pile above - I've numbered them from left to right - and then a page from that book (and, if necessary, a recipe from that page).

Whatever the finger of fate may land on - starter, main course, dessert, soup, salad, wedding cake, rabbit soufflé - that's what I'll be making that day. I'll then document the results here - including feedback from my long-suffering better half who'll be enjoying/enduring the fruits of my labours...

It should be a fun ride. There's a wide old range of cookbooks on that worktop, from reasonably well-thumbed favourites like the BBC Good Food pocket books and reliable Indian and Chinese collections, through to barely-touched eBay purchases that seemed like a good idea at the time (The Microwave Gourmet, seriously?). In and among the weekly posts, I'll be looking at some of them more closely - like all the best books, many come with stories attached.

You might also be able to spot three cardboard folders in there. They're full of recipes I've printed out from the internet, gathered from friends etc. over the years. Each of them counts as a separate book for the purposes of the challenge, giving random.org a grand total of 20 books to choose from.

Just one last thing. There's one book that isn't pictured above: that's The Silver Spoon, and it sits on top of the microwave instead because it's blooming enormous. It's the absolute Bible of Italian cookery and I love it to bits - but again, I've done far more reading of it (and what a glorious, illustrated read it is) than I have actually cooking from it. So it becomes book #21 in the Random Kitchen pool - and I'm secretly hoping it gets chosen more than a few times.

So that's my weekly challenge. It'll be nerdy, it'll be tasty, it'll probably be a rod for my own back more often than not - but I think it'll be good fun too. Watch this space!