Week 34: Warm Potato and Broccoli Salad

The book: 101 Cheap Eats (BBC Good Food)

The recipe: p16, "Warm Potato and Broccoli Salad"

A new book for the Random Kitchen project this week - we've nearly dipped into all 22 of them now! It's from the same pocket-sized series as 101 One-Pot Dishes from way back in Week 4, when we were young and innocent and hadn't yet heard of Spiced Cucumber.

As will become clear, 101 Cheap Eats suffers from the same "uninspired recipe name" issues as its sibling. Specifically, in a dish that involves bacon as a key ingredient, why would you not mention the bacon in the title to try and draw me in?

Although phrasing this dish as a "salad" is already asking for trouble in the first place. Say "warm salad" to me and only one thing springs to mind:

Still, this looks like a straightforward and potentially pleasing bite for a bank holiday lunchtime (and the "cheap" part doesn't hurt either), so let's get cracking!

The prep: I need to buy in pretty much everything but the onion (♫ And I miss you, like my storecupboard misses white wine vinegar... ♫).

That means broccoli, which I accidentally (no, really) scan through as bananas at the self-service checkout - it's a saving of pennies, so sue me - and a jar of wholegrain mustard, as well as a dozen rashers of streaky bacon (I opt for smoked) and the titular potatoes. "This salad looks most attractive when you use Desirée or Romano potatoes", the introduction to the recipe informs me. I don't particularly care, so I just grab a bag of generic baby new potatoes. I imagine they'll do.

The making: The potatoes are halved and parboiled for five minutes, with the floreted broccoli added for the last three ("to floret" is totally a verb, right?). They're drained, then olive oil is heated in a pan and a chopped onion and the parboiled potatoes are "cooked for 8-10 minutes until golden". Inevitably, even with the occasional judicious sprinkling of water, the only thing gets truly golden is the bottom of the pan - but the spuds end up looking okay too. The broccoli is added at the end and warmed through, then the contents of the pan are deposited in a serving bowl.

In the meantime, I've been grilling the bacon until nice and crispy. I then let it drain on kitchen paper because discarding a fraction of the fat officially makes bacon a healthy option.

Finally, more olive oil, white wine vinegar and wholegrain mustard are heated and mixed in the golden pan. Once they've taken on a dressing-like consistency, they're poured over the vegetables and the whole thing is gently mixed together. "Serve with the bacon rashers on top", the recipe says, so I do.

The eating: It won't surprise you to learn that this is a pretty sturdy and satisfying lunch option. Wholegrain mustard and vinegar ensure that the ingredients have a pleasingly tangy coating (if anything I'd prefer it a bit more mustard-y, but that's easily rectified), the broccoli interloper provides some useful freshness and bite (though I acknowledge it wouldn't be to everyone's taste), and ultimately I suppose this is basically just a variant on bratkartoffeln with some greenery added to the bowl. And "salad" optimistically added to its name.

"Bratkartoffelsalat". I guess that works.

The only real sticking point (other than the bottom of the pan) is the bacon: as I mentioned, the recipe calls for it to be served on top of the rest of the "salad", and I'm sticking to what the recipe tells me in this case, but common sense suggests it'd be far better crumbled up and stirred through.

Come to think of it, the Cheap Eats concept doesn't actually stretch to a target price per portion, merely a commitment to "[keeping] the cost to a minimum without sacrificing flavour or quantities". Since a 160g pack of smoked pancetta cubes and a 300g pack of streaky bacon are apparently basically the same price (thanks, internet. Thinternet) and the former would have far more impact than the latter in this particular case, quantities notwithstanding, I'm calling that an official Random Kitchen recommendation.

It's certainly what I'll be doing the next time I make this dish, anyway - and I will make it again, because frankly why wouldn't I? Aspirationally speaking, it's a million miles away from the pretention of last week's Nigella overload. But it makes for a straightforward lunch (or side dish, I suppose), it's effective enough in its execution (mustard 4EVA), and it is quite easy on the pocket. That's a wholly acceptable combination.

One-word verdict: Tangible.

If you think I could do with some exercise to work off all those calories, whether pancetta- or bacon-induced, you're in luck - I'll be running the Royal Parks Half Marathon in early October to raise money for Parkinson's UK, and if you're enjoying The Random Kitchen, I'd be very grateful if you'd consider donating to my fundraising page. Thanks!

Week 33: Merguez with Halloumi and Flame-Roasted Peppers

The book: Nigella Express

The recipe: p365, "Merguez Chorizo with Halloumi and Flame-Roasted Peppers"

The last time we encountered Nigella, she was making us drown a bunch of ingredients in a vat of wine for the sake of speed and convenience. We make a swift return to the pages of Nigella Express this week, landing in the "Storecupboard S.O.S." section. This promises an even simpler recipe consisting of the kind of thing everyone tends to have readily available and on standby for those moments when time is tight or inspiration simply won't strike.

Which is why it's slightly odd that the first ingredient on the list is merguez.

I remember first encountering merguez on a restaurant menu in Évian-les-Bains about five years ago (all very la-di-dah, but we won the trip in a newspaper competition, I swear). While I figured from the pizza-related context that it had to be some kind of meat, I didn't have the nerve to ask an embarrassingly newbie question of the waiter and risk incurring his wrath, his pity or - worse - a long and helpful explanation that my rusty French wouldn't have allowed me to properly understand anyway.

A spicy sausage of North African origin, merguez has become a more common find in Britain in the meantime, but calling it a staple of the store cupboard (that's two words, Nigella) is a bit of a push. Hence the caveat that you can already see in the header of this post. But we'll come to that...

Man-bag

The prep: In her defence, Nigella does say that merguez is preferred but any spicy sausage will do, such as chorizo for its "longer fridge life". That's handy, because even a Saturday wander up to the hipster foodie paradise of Brockley Market fails to yield anything remotely merguez-shaped (or halloumi-shaped, for that matter). Yer big Lewisham Tesco is similarly un-forthcoming - that one was less of a surprise - so it's a relief when I stumble into Gennaro's and immediately see two great big plates of fresh home-made chorizo sausages sitting proudly in the deli cabinet. (I know chorizo isn't Italian, but shh, don't tell them!)

The plates are home to "spicy" and "mild" chorizo respectively, so I decide to play Sausage Roulette by getting equal numbers of each. Apparently they're distinguishable by the string used, but I'm discarding that before cooking anyway, so this should be a fun game.

Other than that, literally the only things the recipe calls for are a lump of halloumi, a jar of flame-roasted peppers (you didn't think lazy old Nigella would be doing the flame-roasting herself, did you?), and some garlic oil. There's no suggestion of any kind of side dish, and indeed the accompanying photo in Nigella Express really is just a plateful of sausages, cheese and peppers. Still, those are three of my favourite things, so I guess I can cope with that.

You've got red on you

The making: Simple as you like, obviously. The sausages are placed in a low-sided roasting tin as ("this makes the cooking time quicker"), then the halloumi is cut "into 5mm slices" - ahh, the millimetre, surely the sexiest of the recipe quantities and not at all reminiscent of screw lengths - before being strewn on and around the sausages.

Next, the peppers are drained and further strewing occurs, although Nigella curiously only tells us to cut the peppers into smaller pieces after telling us to strew them. It's a good thing I read ahead.

Although apparently I could have done with better reading skills, because it's only now that I realise the recipe calls for "8 merguez or spicy sausages, approx. 340g total". My half-dozen plump chorizo are the best part of 100g each. Oops.

I upwardly revise the cooking time accordingly, and 25-30 minutes later, a hot mess of ingredients and fat comes out of the oven:

Not that I'm complaining

It becomes fairly obvious that Nigella's proposal of eating this and nothing else might lead to instant heart failure, so I take an executive decision and rustle up some couscous as a side. If nothing else, it'll help to soak up some of the excess grease.

The eating: See, here's the thing. This should be brilliant - it's good-quality spicy sausages and halloumi, for heaven's sake. But it's just too much. TOO MUCH. Even with the couscous for balance and bulk, the sheer richness and fattiness of the chorizo and the cheese are utterly overwhelming, and about halfway through eating I'm secretly wishing it was already over.

The sausages are lovely, don't get me wrong - although we struggle to spot the difference between the spicy and non-spicy ones, proving that the house always wins when it comes to roulette - but the halloumi is rather soggy compared with when you griddle or pan-fry it (logically enough), and sogginess isn't a characteristic that suits it especially well.

Looks innocent enough

The peppers, however, are great, soaking up a lot of the sausage-y fatty goodness but also providing some much-needed sharp contrast to the more indulgent textures of the meat and cheese. In fact, loath as I am to say it, the dish would really have benefited from a lot more peppers and a lot less in the way of pseudo-merguez and halloumi. It's the same reason I've never gone back to the (ahem) "Über Ding" at the otherwise flawless Herman ze German - it turns out you actually can have too much of a good thing.

I'm by no means a healthy eater (as the above Herman love-in demonstrates), but I don't tend to overdo it when it comes to fat and salt, and several hours after dinnertime I can still feel my heart racing as my body tries to work out how the fuck to actually deal with this unfamiliar onslaught. It's only by the next morning that I'm willing to even look at food again.

So when the introduction to the recipe proudly proclaims "This is a regular supper at Casa Lawson," I can only assume this means Nigella has installed a winch and pulley system to help her guests and family members to get into and out of their chairs.

One-word verdict: Overwhelming.

If you think I could do with some exercise to work off all those chorizo calories, you're in luck - I'll be running the Royal Parks Half Marathon in early October to raise money for Parkinson's UK, and if you're enjoying The Random Kitchen, I'd be very grateful if you'd consider donating to my fundraising page. Thanks!

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.

If you're enjoying The Random Kitchen, I'd be very grateful if you'd consider donating to my Royal Parks Half Marathon fundraising page. I'll be doing the run in early October to raise money for Parkinson's UK, and your support is hugely appreciated. Thanks!

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.