Week 25: Spicy Sweet Potato, Butternut Squash & Chickpea Soup

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

The recipe: p312, "Spicy Sweet Potato, Butternut Squash & Chickpea Soup"

Feeling distinctly unmotivated following a weekend trip to Wales and still slogging through the murk of Brexit depression, I'm secretly quite relieved when random.org throws up a relatively simple soup from a book we last encountered way back in Week 3 instead of a three-stage seafood vol-au-vent or a meringue swan that's going to tie me to the kitchen worktop for hours and hours.

We're firmly into the dark months of the year as far as the structure of the book is concerned, and the recipes reflect this - the next double-page features "Bangers & Beans" and "Bangers, Mash & Savoy Cabbage", both of which sound like they might mark the point where soup and baby food intersect - but in the case of this week's random choice, which "belongs" to November 2nd, I'm anticipating something closer to a soup version of the weekday vegetable curries I bash out on a semi-regular basis. That'd do nicely even on a drizzly June evening.

The prep: The ingredient list is surprisingly long for a simple soup, though none of it is hard to track down. As well as the squash and the sweet potato, I'm short of sesame seeds, a lime and some fresh coriander, all of which are easily sourced locally. The recipe casually mentions that the cumin and coriander seeds need to be toasted and ground first, and the sesame seeds toasted but not ground (even though the soup is going to get thoroughly blended later on, but okay). Other than that, it's straight on to the business end of proceedings.

The making: An onion and some garlic are slowly cooked in oil for ten minutes, then the aforementioned seeds, some ginger, a deseeded, chopped green chilli, the zest of a lime and a teaspoon of honey are added and the whole thing is stirred for 30 seconds.

Next, the sweet potato and the butternut squash are stirred through, half of the juice of the lime is added, and a healthy portion of vegetable stock is poured in. The mixture is brought to the boil and simmered for ten minutes, then the chick peas are added and the mixture is given another ten minutes in the pan. The remaining lime juice is added "to taste" - your guess is as good as mine, to be honest, since I'm not in the habit of knowing how much lime I need in my life - then the soup is blended "until very smooth". Chopped coriander is sprinkled on top before serving, resulting in something looking uncannily like a bowl of soup:

The eating: Everything's been going well until now, so it's disappointing to report that the end product doesn't really deliver. Basically, the problem is in the spices and seasoning. I expected the interesting dark gloopiness of the cumin, coriander, sesame seeds, honey and co. to give the soup a really nice base flavour, but the sole green chilli is nowhere near enough to deliver the kick required to offset the inherent blandness of the squash and sweet potato. Easily resolved, of course - a healthy slug of Cholula does the trick second time round - but a bit of a let-down for a recipe that calls itself "spicy".

Texturally I certainly can't complain - it fits the bill as a hearty bread-dunker for a lazy weekday evening - and the taste does start to develop and assert itself as you work your way through the bowl, so maybe it's a slow-burner (albeit without the burn). Also, on a purely procedural front, I quite like the idea of using something like chick peas to thicken instead of the usual "just chuck a potato in there", even if they don't really add much to the dish.

You'll forgive me, though, for longing for the kind of "soup" in which my warm walnut tart at The Shed in Porthgain on Saturday night was swimming. Caramel, butterscotch and cream: basically a week's calorie allowance on a single plate. Mmmmmm.

Getting back to the topic at hand, anyway: this was absolutely okay, but there needs to be a whole lot more happening on the flavour front for it to justify its name and make a repeat appearance on a non-Random Kitchen day. Ho hum.

One-word verdict: Adequate.

Week 24: Oven-fried Chilli Chicken

The book: Indian Food Made Easy (Anjum Anand)

The recipe: p37, "Oven-fried Chilli Chicken"

When this recipe came out of the random number generator, my first thought was "Oven-fried? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?" Google says no, anyway - and as an adopted child of SE London, I'm certainly up for what looks like a classier version of the atrocious late-night beer sponges peddled by local establishments called things like Quality Fried Chicken or - and I swear I am not shitting you here - Favourable Chicken and Ribs.

Now, it's fair to say that Anjum Anand and I have history. To cut a long story short, thus far the Indian Food Made Easy experience has been less "food made easy" and more:

Still, this week's recipe is mercifully free of anything that could curdle (I would hope...), so we might just be on safe territory here. Anjum describes this dish as "perfect sharing food, especially if men and TV are involved", because obviously women hate chicken and Netflix. Outdated patriarchal views notwithstanding, I am a man and I do like a bit of telly, so this can only be a winner, right?

The prep: Dead straightforward, particularly for someone who likes a bit of Indian cooking - there's very little here that isn't already in the spice cupboard. I don't even have to venture into town as our trusty Tesco Express provides me with all I'm missing, namely a lemon, some eggs, and 800g of "chicken joints" (I go with a mixture of thighs and legs, since this is going to form part of an actual evening meal, though I suppose you'd probably want all legs if you were making these as a handy beer snack).

The making: Ginger, garlic, green chillies (seeds removed "if wanted" - I do want), salt, garam masala, lemon juice and vegetable oil are blitzed into a paste. The chicken portions are then skinned and "forked all over" - Anjum, you tease - before being coated in the paste and left to marinate for a couple of hours. In my experience, stereotypical situations involving men and TV have a habit of occurring spontaneously, so the boys are obviously going to get hungry and crack open the green Pringles well before our marinating time is up, but never mind.

Once we're finally ready to roll, more vegetable oil is added to a heavy roasting tin and placed in a preheated oven to get nice and hot. Meanwhile, breadcrumbs are mixed in a bowl with more salt, freshly ground black pepper, and cumin powder. One by one, the chicken joints are removed from the marinade, rolled in the breadcrumbs, then dipped in the egg and rolled in the breadcrumbs again. And into the oven they go!

The temperature is lowered halfway through and the chicken pieces are turned, which inevitably means some of the coating sticks to the tin and ruins the visual effect of the whole thing. Other than that, though, this looks pretty much as it should. Very promising.

The eating: So this is pretty damn good. And that's about all I can say about it really. Anjum, you have redeemed yourself.

Obviously it's just a recipe for crispy-coated chicken so it's never going to be anything particularly revolutionary, but the chilli kick of the marinade means the chicken packs a gnarly punch, while the cumin and salt-and-pepper coating is super tasty and crisps up nicely without absorbing huge quantities of oil like it would if you fried it. Whilst certainly not a healthy option, it's a healthier option, and that's something.

Since we're not watching the football, I serve a couple of thighs on brown basmati rice as our main meal, accompanied by some spring (well, summer) greens sautéd with cumin and mustard seeds. (Although we do then go back and eat the two leftover drumsticks with our hands like REAL MEN.) The lemon wedges, incidentally, are recommended by the recipe but seem a little superfluous. Despite this, it's a very satisfying combination.

All of which makes for unspectacular blog content, I suppose - nothing went hugely wrong, nothing was particularly loltastic (other than the forking) - but a Random Kitchen meal that's both reasonably straightforward and reasonably successful? I, for one, am not complaining.

One-word verdict: MANLY.

Week 23: Seafood Vol-au-Vent

The book: The Silver Spoon

The recipe: p417, "Seafood Vol-au-Vent"

Sometimes you know a recipe is going to be problematic as soon as you size up the ingredients list. Take this week's random.org choice. It's the Silver Spoon causing problems again - not with unobtainable kitchenware this time, but with the requirement that I source "1 large vol-a-vent case, about 15-20 cm".

I live in Lewisham, where (it turns out) the supermarkets don't even have dinky party-size vol-au-vent cases available; the nearest place I can imagine coming up with the goods is the Waitrose in Greenwich or, more likely, the huge branch at Canary Wharf, but I'm not Oystering it over there on a Sunday afternoon on the off-chance.

So, for "Seafood Vol-au-Vent" read "Two Slightly Smaller Seafood Puff Pastry Tarts". I mean, it's not as if vol-au-vents are particularly Italian in the first place (the translation of this dish in the Silver Spoon is the decidedly unconvincing "Vol-au-vent di mare"), so I reckon I can justify the improvisation.

The prep: There's plenty of puff pastry left in the freezer from our ventures into galette and "pie" territory earlier in the year, so no problem on that front. Otherwise, for all the ingredient list is long and initially daunting, it's actually all quite straightforward. The recipe calls for "hake or cod fillet", but since it's all going to get smushed up in the end, I'm happy to cut corners with some generic frozen white fish. Prawns (also of the frozen variety) need to be procured and, not for the first time, I'll be substituting sherry with the Shaohsing rice wine that's had pride of place in my spices 'n' seasonings cupboard since the heady days of Week 6.

The only other complication is the need for a half-portion of the Béchamel sauce as described on page 58 of the Silver Spoon. I'd consider cheating on this one if I could, but since Sainsbury's is sadly bereft of the kind of TetraPak-clad shortcuts I learned to love during my time in Germany...

...I'm just going to have to make it from scratch. (I know a packet of white sauce powder would basically do the trick too, but we're starting to veer dangerously from the original recipe now, and that kind of behaviour needs to be halted in its tracks.)

The making: The method of the recipe is a long and rambling beast, but it makes far more logical sense if you separate it out into three strands instead of the overlapping presentation preferred by the Silver Spoon, not least since I don't think the timings necessarily justify the juggling it seems to want me to indulge in.

Firstly, there's the fish. Specifically, "fish balls". Appetising! The white fish fillets are poached in a pot filled with salted water, dry white wine, a bay leaf, a garlic clove, parsley, a stick of celery, a sliced carrot and a sliced onion. I then drain the fish, reserving the stock (this bit should be in bold - I very nearly forget, which would, it turns out, have been a bit of a disaster). The carrots etc. are discarded, then the fish is flaked and smushed up in a bowl along with an egg and some bread that's been soaked in milk. The idea is to form this mixture into balls - let's call them "dumplings", it sounds nicer that way - but the recipe never specifies how many dumplings I should be making (or, if you must, how big my balls need to be), so it's difficult to know how to proceed.

I end up with two platefuls of not especially spherical dumplings that I suspect may be a little on the large side, but so be it. They're dusted with flour, then plunged back into the retained and now-boiling fish stock until they float to the surface, before being removed and dried on kitchen paper. And that's the first strand done.

I did say it was a rambling kind of recipe.

The second component is the prawns. These are more straightforward: the prawns are fried in butter for two minutes, then the rice wine is added and the mixture is cooked down until the liquid has evaporated. The prawns are then seasoned and set aside.

Finally, there's the Béchamel sauce. I've mentioned previously that I tend to be useless at making white sauces without lumps, so it's pleasing to note that the Silver Spoon method, while a little more time-consuming, is entirely successful. It basically involves taking the pan off the heat before adding the flour to the melted butter, and keeping it off the heat while you very gradually add and stir in the milk. Only then does it go back over a low flame to simmer down for a good 20 minutes. "Optional" nutmeg is added at the end of proceedings (I say yes to nutmeg and yes to some black pepper too, because fish and prawns do have a habit of being a little on the bland side), et voilà, one smooth Béchamel.

With a ready-made vol-au-vent case, all that would remain would be to assemble the contents and serve. Since I'm using a rough-and-ready puff pastry alternative, I half-cook the pastry base then arrange the ingredients as required by the recipe - a layer of the fish balls first, topped with the prawns and then the Béchamel - before returning to the baking tray to the oven for the home straight of pastry-cooking and warming-through.

The eating: First and foremost: this dish wins no prizes for elegant presentation. That's partly down to the pastry situation - a deep-sided vol-au-vent would house the contents and sauce far more efficiently - and partly because I suspect my fish dumplings are somewhat bigger than intended, hence towering over proceedings and giving the finished dish a rather lumpy and lop-sided look.

The eating, though. Oh, the eating. This is really good. The poaching process infuses the potentially bland white fish with a gorgeous subtle flavour, while the dumplings have a sticky, Chinese-like consistency that makes them really nice to eat even if they are a bit on the large side. Meanwhile, the prawns are buttery and moreish - and, let's face it, you can't really go wrong with anything that's smeared in Béchamel sauce and served in some kind of pastry.

It is a lot of work for the eventual outcome, as you might have gathered by now. A bit extravagant for a Sunday meal for two, to be honest (the recipe says "serves 6"; you can imagine how that worked out for us), but I can see it being worth the effort as a dinner party piece, especially if you can actually source a massive vol-au-vent case to serve the thing from (or even some medium-sized ones so everyone gets one each).

More importantly, I feel like I've actually learned some transferable skills here - the merits of a decent fish stock, how to make nicely claggy dumplings, how patience is the main ingredient in a lump-free sauce - and that feels good. Even if I'm still not entirely sure why an Italian cookbook is firing vol-au-vent recipes at me.

One-word summary: Rewarding.

Week 22: Marbled Ring Cake (Ciambella Marmorizzata)

The book: The Silver Spoon

The recipe: p1222, "Marbled Ring Cake (Ciambella Marmorizzata)"

Honestly, you wait all year for a cake then two come along at once. Still, this contribution from The Silver Spoon immediately appears a very different proposition to last week's adventure in layering and icing - it's filed under the "Tea-Time Cakes" section of the Italian cookery bible, so it presumably won't be particularly cloying in its sweetness, and the ingredient list is mercifully short and uncomplicated. Plus I'm now the proud owner of not one but two cake tins, so I might as well make use of them.

"Marbled"?

It's worth noting that this is how The Silver Spoon chooses to illustrate the recipe in question. Considering it involves cocoa and icing sugar, for two things, I tend to suspect there's been an editorial mix-up somewhere along the line. Either that or something very odd will be happening in my oven.

The prep: Ah, hang on a minute - so much for simplicity. Whether it's supposed to match the illustration or not, the recipe for this Marbled Ring Cake does call for a ring mould. I don't own one of them, but you'd think something along those lines would be easy enough to source locally - a tube pan or even a more intricate and frilly Bundt pan would do the trick just fine, after all. Basically anything that'll result in a cake with a hole in the middle, whatever size the hole may be.

But of course that'd be too easy. One protracted traipse around the Lewisham Centre later, I remain empty-handed and bereft of Bundt. Sainsbury's, Argos, M&S, BHS, Tiger, Poundland, Poundstretcher, your boys gave me one hell of a beating. Even TK Maxx lets me down, and their entire business model is basically to stock one of everything.

Now, at this point, it seems three options are available to me. Firstly, just cook the thing in a regular cake tin and forego the pleasing-on-the-eye ring shape altogether (and risk a cake with a soggy middle in doing so). Secondly, ask on Twitter to see if anyone local has a suitable tin I can borrow for the occasion.

Or thirdly, improvise.

Amazing what you can achieve with some baking paper, tin foil and baking beans, isn't it? OK, so this isn't going to result in an attractive ring cake with nice curved sides - but it's a ridiculous solution that seems entirely fitting for a project where I'm using a random number generator to decide what I get to eat, for heaven's sake, so I'm happy.

Remarkably, fresh ingredients (eggs and milk) aside, there's nothing else in the recipe that I actually need to buy in, so my shopping ordeal is over once I finally give up on the pan-hunt. That's definitely something in this recipe's favour, although it does suggest the end result might be a little on the basic side.

The making: I would start by dusting the ring mould with sugar and flour, but that seems a bit pointless since I won't be turning the cake out at the end of proceedings, so I don't. Skipping to the next stage, flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and sugar are sifted together, before being folded into a mixture of eggs, melted butter and milk and stirred vigorously until nice and smooth. Standard cake batter procedure, in other words.

Next, one-third of the mixture is poured into another bowl, where some cocoa powder is sieved in and stirred through. Alternating spoonfuls of the plain mixture and the chocolate mixture are deposited in the cake tin, then a knife is drawn through the mixture to marble it. Sam struggles to understand the marbling concept when I try and explain it to him later, but fortunately I'm able to call upon an easy analogy from our field of mutual interest by way of illustration.

Baking the cakes of love

After 35-40 minutes in the oven, the cake is left to stand for a while before being turned out and dusted with icing sugar. And, wonder of wonders, my improvisation is broadly successful - a little bit of batter ends up seeping in at the edges, so the baking beans need some cleaning afterwards, but otherwise the contraption peels away easily to leave the desired hole in the middle. Hurrah!

The eating: On slicing, it becomes immediately clear that the desired marbling effect has failed to materialise, with the relative densities of the plain and chocolate batters instead resulting in two quite distinct layers. Still, I'm not serving this one up to a queue of tired parkrunners, so I'm less fussed about the presentation side of things than I might be had this recipe come up a week ago.

Layer Cake

As anticipated, the cake isn't particularly moist or sugary, but it goes perfectly well with a cup of tea or a double espresso (or a mug of octuple espresso, in my case). Following extensive experimentation, we can confirm it also goes well with a healthy dollop of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie - but then most things do.

So, yeah. Not the most exciting of recipes (and I'm generally still waiting for The Silver Spoon to knock my socks off), but not a bad outcome and - let's be honest - well worth the effort if only for the comedy value of the kitchen utensil improvisation.

One-word verdict: Holey.