The recipe: p365, "
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...
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| 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.
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| 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:
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| 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.
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| 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!
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