Week 38: Buttered Saffron Couscous

The book: Good Housekeeping New Step-by-Step Cookbook

The recipe: p324, "Buttered Saffron Couscous"

There's a valid argument that blogging is the preserve of the egotist. After all, who else would deem their thoughts and experiences worthy of broadcast to the wider (and largely uninterested) world?

And while I'm not deluded enough to think that this silly little project has any greater meaning, I can't deny occasionally sneaking a look at the view counts for The Random Kitchen, where it's notable that - while the overall stats are generally steady - the weeks with the less inspiring-sounding recipes do tend to garner the fewest hits.

As such, if you've made it this far, well done to you. Because if we're being honest, this week's selection sounds pretty dull. There's no point in pretending that couscous is exciting in and of itself, though it does an excellent job of soaking up more interesting flavours - and while there's a certain curiosity in the fact that we're encountering a saffron-dominated recipe so soon after the last one, this is ultimately a side dish, and not a particularly thrilling one at that.

Still, the random gods make no distinction between complex main courses and simple sauces, so let's follow the fickle finger of fate and see where it leads us...

The prep: The three main ingredients here are butter, saffron and couscous.

Our cupboards are well-stocked with couscous, quinoa, bulgur wheat and all manner of middle-class wankery, so that's fine. There's butter in the fridge from various recent baking experiments, and the leftover saffron from the aforementioned fish dish is sufficient for my needs today. Hurrah!

The recipe also calls for toasted pine nuts. I can't bring myself to buy them pre-toasted when I can easily achieve a satisfactory end result using the one-egg frying pan whose virtues I extolled here - so that's what I do. Some fresh parsley also needs to come on board, and that, as the great Sir Terry used to say, is about the height of it.

The making: First things first: the recipe calls for the couscous to be soaked in cold water, then spooned "into a wire sieve lined with muslin" and steamed over a pan of boiling water for 35 minutes. Now I know I try to stick to the recipe wherever possible, but things have presumably moved on since this book was published - it's minted cumpkins now, grandad! - and quick-cook couscous with a five-minute soaking time is standard kitchen procedure nowadays.

Granted, the internet cheerfully informs me that the steaming process is not only more authentic, but leads to significantly plumper and more satisfactory grains - but when I read this dire warning of three or four separate steamings lasting the best part of an hour, I hit CTRL+ALT+FuckThatShit and opt for the lazy modern variant instead. Besides, like an illiterate Britain First knucklehead, my house is proudly muslin-free.

In my version of the recipe, then, the saffron strands are mixed with a small amount of freshly boiled water and stirred through the dry couscous along with the toasted pine nuts. The requisite quantity of boiling water is then added and the couscous mixture is covered for five minutes before being fluffed up nicely with a fork.

The original recipe says that 75g of butter should be added at this stage. I assume the extensive steaming process would make the couscous sufficiently hot to melt the butter, whereas this version is obviously slightly less scalding after sitting on the side for five minutes, so I give the butter a quick zap in the microwave before stirring it through.

Finally, the chopped parsley is added along with some salt and pepper, et voilà: a North African side dish via the mean streets (and shortcuts) of South-East London.

Spot the ginger pube

The eating: Given the strong colour of saffron and the already yellowish nature of couscous, I was expecting this dish to offer up something of a visual riot. It's still quite attractive, but it does look a bit monotonous - if I was making it again, I'd use some typical accompaniments like a handful of raisins or a tin of chickpeas to break things up a bit.

Still, it is a side dish, and it pairs well with the stronger offsetting flavours I happen to be using (the Reggae Reggae Sauce that's coating the Foreman-grilled chicken breasts and the chorizo I've deployed to tart up the veg), even if that's primarily a happy side-effect of "we're going on holiday so need to use up whatever's left in the fridge" syndrome.

(Leftover diced carrot and swede, you say? I wonder where that could have come from...)

While a perfectly decent dish, my gut reaction is that the saffron and butter make it a bit rich and overwhelming - so I'm pleasantly surprised when Sam, something of a couscous sceptic, absolutely loves it.

Which makes it all the more galling that the Tupperwared leftovers come to a sticky end when our fridge-freezer decides to ascend to Silicon Heaven during the aforementioned holiday. Bah.

We refrain from claiming the spoiled food on our home insurance - it's mostly 27p packs of sausages from the reduced aisle at Tesco, after all - although considering how expensive saffron is and how often The Random Kitchen seems to want me to use it, I'm starting to think we ought to have...

One-word verdict: Lazy.

Week 37: Good Old Shepherd's Pie

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

The recipe: p. 98, "Good Old Shepherd's Pie"

Ah, excellent! I'd actually been hoping something like this might come up - it's one of the flagship recipes from Delia's controversial How To Cheat At Cooking tome, attracting media attention at the time for the expensive shortcuts it espoused (and the subsequent spike in M&S tinned mince sales).

It's housed in a section of the book entitled "Uncool: What Mums Used To Make", which immediately sets my teeth on edge (besides, my mum was all about the bobotie call), and the "Good Old" prefix to the recipe certainly doesn't help matters.

"Everybody loves shepherd’s pie, but few have the time to make it… until now!" is the assertion made by Delia in the intro to this recipe, but is that really true? It's a dish that involves multiple steps, sure, but we're hardly talking a lakeful of meringue swans here, and I'm quite happy to spend an hour assembling a shepherd's pie on a lazy Sunday - tasks like browning the mince or boiling and mashing the potatoes may be moderately time-consuming, but they're not exactly taxing on the brain or the kind of thing that requires continuous attention.

Still, I suppose this is aimed more at busy working folk who fancy a bit of lamb and mash action of a weeknight, so let's take it in that spirit (and overlook the grating tweeness of the presentation) and see what Delia has in store to make our lives easier this time.

The prep: One of the key premises of How To Cheat At Cooking is that it not only points out the shortcuts to take, but tells you specifically which brand to buy in each case. In the interests of Random Kitchen integrity, I try my best to meet Delia's demands, albeit without travelling beyond the borders of Lewisham (because that would be ridiculous in a way that the Random Kitchen project as a whole apparently isn't).

For the most part, I'm successful: Tesco is happy to provide me with a bag of ready-prepared diced mixed carrot and swede (as if the Sainsbury's version wouldn't have sufficed, Delia), while that (in)famous Marks & Spencer tinned lamb is also easy enough to find, although I have to pay through the nose for two smaller grandmother-tins due to some less than ideal stocking choices at our local branch.

I have to compromise and accept own-brand frozen mashed potato instead of Aunt Bessie's, while the recipe kindly allows me the alternative of using a fresh onion instead of buying a bag of frozen diced onion just for the occasion. Whereas ready-grated cheese goes without saying in our lazy household anyway, so that's a Delia time saving I'm certainly not going to argue with.

Oh, and then there's the leeks.

Let's just dwell on that for a moment. Leeks. In a shepherd's pie. And I don't mean instead of the onion in the filling, which I could get behind - Delia wants me to sprinkle them on top of the potato before the cheese goes on top. Leeks. As part of the topping. This isn't a normal thing, right? And yet at no point does she attempt to explain or justify this ingredient - it's clearly one of her things, because it crops up in her non-cheat version of the recipe too.

Leeks, man. In a shepherd's pie. I'm going to need some time to get on board with this.

The making: This ought to be fairly concise or the book really isn't doing its job.

Oil is heated in a pan, then the chopped onion and diced carrot and swede are added and cooked for five minutes until softened and starting to brown a little. The minced lamb - which, I'm afraid, does rather resemble dog food - is added along with some thyme and cinnamon, then this mixture is transferred to a baking dish.

The "discs" of frozen mash (in the own-brand variant, they're shaped more like chipolata sausages) are arranged atop the filling, then the finely chopped leeks - I am still not okay with this, Delia - are scattered on top and the grated Cheddar is applied.

And that's it. Quick and simple, as I suppose it should be. The dish goes into the oven and comes out looking pretty okay for a cheat's variant:

And actually, for all my leek-related protests, it does give the dish a pleasingly rustic and textured look, doesn't it?

The eating: Delia's serving suggestion is "a bag of ready-shredded spring greens". Since the oven's going on anyway, I do some garlic-roasted broccoli - I hope she'll forgive me the two whole minutes I wasted on chopping the broccoli into florets rather than using frozen.

As much as I might want to, I can't altogether dispute the success of this (ahem) "Good Old Shepherd's Pie". It's really quite different to the standard Good Housekeeping recipe I've relied on for years, with flavour twists provided not only by the leeks, but also by the swede, thyme and cinnamon. It all makes for a slightly more complex and layered flavour experience, but I feel like that's missing the point slightly - surely all you want from shepherd's pie is that immediate, comforting rush of mince and potato and cheese IN YOUR FACE.

There's also the inevitable problem - first encountered back in Week 7 - of excess saltiness when using several ready-made ingredients, and the dog food minced lamb certainly suffers from this. It's not particularly easy on the pocket either, but then neither is fresh lamb mince, and all the other shortcut ingredients are pretty cheap and cheerful so I'm not going to complain too much.

While we're busy destroying Delia's worldview, I'd say the time savings can also be disputed to an extent when you still need to cook the vegetables and all, though fast-forwarding the mince-browning and potato-boiling-and-mashing phases probably shouldn't be sniffed at. I think I'd happily compromise on using frozen mash but fresh mince in future, and those diced vegetables are definitely worth 50p of anyone's money.

At the end of the day, though, this is just a slightly easier way of making a slightly saltier, slightly more expensive shepherd's pie - and like the last time we encountered this book, I find myself wondering why you wouldn't just buy a frozen shepherd's pie and be done with it.

For the final word, then, we return to the introduction to the recipe. I quote: "You won't believe this one until you try it - nothing short of sensational, I would say." I've tried it, I believe it... and I would say it's fine. I reckon Delia's hyperbole needs to go the same way as that minced lamb: canned.

One-word verdict: Adequate.

Week 36: Stuffed Rice Salad

The book: My green recipe folder 

The recipe: no. 13, "Stuffed Rice Salad"

My green folder, previously untapped by the Random Kitchen project, contains recipes that have been given to me by (or procured from) friends and family. These range from my one-time Mainz-mate Kate's concoction known only as "Rice Monstrosity", via the Sick Children's Trust's booklet of Big Chocolate Tea recipes, through to the handful of regular recipes my Mum armed me with when I first moved to Germany after graduation.

This week's recipe also comes from my Mum's collection - but indirectly. I'd asked her to give me the recipe for a really nice carrot and courgette flan that I often roll out when we have people over. The easiest way for her to do this was simply to photocopy the entire page of patchwork cuttings snipped out of local newspapers and women's magazines dating back to the 1980s, if not earlier.

You get the idea

(Yes, that is a Swedish recipe for potato waffles in the top-right.)

Having left the page intact in my happy green folder, it's only right that the entire contents are fair game for Random Kitchen purposes, including recipes that my Mum has probably never actually made herself.

Which brings us to "Stuffed Rice Salad". That's the one at the top of the page, under the wildly optimistic heading "The pride of any buffet!". (Full marks to the Evening Chronicle sub-editors for that one.) Quite aside from the linguistic improbability of "stuffed rice", everything about this recipe screams DECADES OUT OF TIME, from the ingredients to the ring mould I'm supposed to use to shape it into its glorious three-dimensional presentation. We're talking Delia in a beige kitchen on BBC1 and then some.

My thoughts are immediately drawn to that amazing old website of Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974, and I find myself anticipating something akin to a hybrid of these wonders:

Appetising

All of which is my way of saying this sounds potentially amazing. And certainly very random. So let's get to it!

The prep: Earlier in the year, I wouldn't have owned the ring mould required for this dish, but the need for experimentation back in Week 22 prompted me to pick up a very fetching little aluminium bundt pan that's tailor-made for this week's adventure in 1980s buffet cookery. Hurrah!

Most of the vegetables for the "salad" part of the dish need to be bought, as does the long-grain rice (missing from our cupboards thanks to a recent propensity to wimp out and just use microwave rice pouches, because frankly why not). Needless to say, though, nothing from this 1980s recipe is difficult to find at a London supermarket in 2016, which actually makes something of a pleasant change.

The making: Rice is cooked in chicken stock until tender, then chopped celery and onion is stirred into the rice along with some mayonnaise. Diced red and green pepper is scattered in the base of the bundt pan, then the rice mixture is transferred and packed down firmly in the hope that it'll tip out of the mould in one piece.

Appetising

This would ideally be chilled in the fridge overnight, but "at least 3 hours" is the lower end of the scale offered, and we've got about 6 hours to spare. That should hopefully do the trick, and so...

Moment of truth time

Amazingly, it actually works - the rice/celery/onion mix slides out of the mould, neatly topped by the slightly embedded peppers. Chalk one up for the olden days!

Next it's time to deal with the "stuffed" part of the recipe. As you might have gathered from the fact that we're using a bundt pan or ring mould here, the idea is that the "stuffing" goes into the hole in the middle of the rice stack. So I chop a couple of avocados, mix them with "lemon juice or wine vinegar" (not entirely similar substances, so I hedge my bets and use a bit of both), then try my best to follow the instruction to cut blue cheese "into tiny dice".

Squidgy cheese is not especially cooperative

The idea is for the avocado to be piled into the centre of the rice ring before being sprinkled with the diced cheese. With my bundt pan being at the smaller end of the scale, my ring evidently isn't wide enough, because there's plenty of avocado (and cheese) to spare - but never mind, no one's going to complain about it being served on the side, because avocado and cheese are both awesome.

A cautionary scrunch of the pepper mill and we're ready to serve. I call Sam into the kitchen; he laughs out loud. Readers, I have created the 1980s on a plate:

The pride of any buffet!

I mean, that is frankly heroic. It looks less awful than the Weight Watchers examples above, but it definitely looks ridiculous. And yet I kind of want to have a house party right now so I can serve it to everyone I know. But how does it taste?

The eating: My mistake, I think, is trying to pass this off as our main meal rather than... well, part of a buffet (proud or otherwise). After all, it is just some vegetables and rice with a bit of cheese on top. Having sat in the fridge for a whole afternoon and then some, the celery flavour has infused the rice, making it something of a matter of taste (it's more to mine than Sam's). The avocado and blue cheese is an odd combination that would never really have occurred to me, and while it doesn't not work, I wouldn't rush to repeat it.

And yet it's actually quite an enjoyable eat, all told, with a freshness and crunch that's pleasingly offset by the more extravagant ingredients. Sam disagrees somewhat (or at least he ends up microwaving a Pieminister pie pot for his actual dinner, so read into that what you will), but I have to remind myself that I was actually eating this kind of thing in 1985, while he was busy being born and stuff. That's definitely the kind of thing that can colour your judgement (not to mention terrify you slightly).

As such, I think my main takeaways from this week's Random Kitchen experience are the knowledge that recipes calling for a construction to be poured into and then out of a ring mould don't necessarily have to end in disaster - plus a healthy dose of nostalgia for those get-togethers of my parents' friends at our house in Woodbine Avenue, complete with sideburns, big glasses, and most likely a whole lot of pipe-smoking. Those were the days. Well, those were days, at any rate.

I made the 1980s on a plate! I might just have to add that to my CV.

One-word verdict: Retro.

If you think I need to get my head out of the past and focus on the immediate future instead, you may have a point - I'm currently in training for the Royal Parks Half Marathon, which I'll be running in early October to raise money for Parkinson's UK. If you're enjoying The Random Kitchen, I'd be very grateful if you'd consider donating to my fundraising page. Thanks!

Week 35: Sweet and Sour Fish

The book: Good Housekeeping New Step-by-Step Cookbook 

The recipe: p151, "Sweet and Sour Fish"

Seriously, these recipe names are getting silly now. This week's ingredient list calls for cod; at no point does it so much as suggest that the reader use anything other than cod; and yet the resulting dish labours under the name "Sweet and Sour Fish". Uninspiring much?

Anyway, where were we? Hello! Welcome to the 35th weekly trawl through my collection of cookbooks, aided and abetted by random.org. I suppose "uninspiring" is appropriate for this week's selection, since the Good Housekeeping bible has no aspirations beyond compiling a set of good, solid recipes for the good, solid British kitchen. And in that kitchen, why wouldn't a fish be called a fish? None of your fancy continental "names" here.

My relationship with sweet and sour isn't the best. I associate it with crap supermarket ready meals and the gloopy, MSG-heavy sauces that seem to plague every single dish on the menu at Chinese restaurants in Germany (a decade since I moved back, I'm still scarred). Or, worse yet, the vats of Mystery Meat you get at €3.99 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets on Lanzarote and Gran Canaria, where you have to hope they're making a hell of a mark-up on the drinks as otherwise they're definitely not employing cleaners.

If there's a mistake on the bill, for god's sake don't protest

Still, making a sauce from scratch and pairing it with fish for a change sounds like the kind of thing that could yet win me over to the sweet and sour side, so I'm game.

The prep: The ingredient list is reassuringly lengthy, although very little of it falls outwith the realms of the store cupboard. It's only the fresh ingredients I have to buy in: a red pepper and some spring onions (I have mushrooms in the fridge already, while the recipe calls for frozen green beans - I haz a skeptical). And the "fish", of course - four cod fillets, to be precise. Shortly-before-closing supermarket stock issues require that I buy a pack of smoked fillets along with the regular variety, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

And that's it on the preparation front. A quick check of the recipe and the accompanying photo confirms my suspicions - this really is just going to be fish and some veg. I'm immediately put in mind of the gently sexist "NO CARBS FRÄULEIN?" option at the otherwise impeccable Herman ze German. Still, I'm won over by the promise of a main meal that's a mere 400 calories (the recipe says "200 calories/serving", but I know better than to expect this to serve four people).

The making: The cod fillets are halved lengthwise, then rolled up "neatly with the skinned side inside". This isn't as easy as it might look, particularly since the fillets are unevenly sized in the first place, resulting in correspondingly uneven rolls o' cod. I opt to use toothpicks to hold them in place for the time being, as otherwise they'd risk unravelling pretty speedily.

Next, the sweet and sour component is prepared by mixing together soy sauce, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, honey, tomato ketchup (a decidedly Brexit addition to proceedings), garlic and paprika. Duly whisked, this sauce is gently heated in a sauté pan before the rolled-up fish fillets are added and given a right good basting.

Further scepticism ensues when I note that 10-12 minutes on the hob is supposed to be enough to cook the fish rolls without any flipping or turning (probably for the best, I suppose, considering they'd likely fall apart). A second glance shows that I've missed a key detail, namely that the pan needs to be covered so that the fish is basically steamed. That makes more sense. I don't have a big enough lid, but an upside-down dinner plate will do.

The recipe doesn't tell me to, but it seems to make sense to baste the fish throughout the cooking process, so I do - although I can't say it's terribly promising when the sauce gradually gets thinned out by the fish juices, ending up with lots of little bits of cod floating in it. Er, yum...?

In the meantime, the aforementioned vegetables are chopped up and stir-fried. I would describe this in greater detail, but you've made a stir-fry before.

That done, we're all ready to assemble a low-carb, low-calorie, hopefully high-flavour dinner.

The eating: Considering how simple it is, this one actually scrubs up pretty well. The cod rolls hold together even with the toothpicks removed, and from the right angle they almost looks deep-fried (though sadly for the taste buds - if fortunately for the waistline - they aren't).

Despite my prior reservations about the frozen green beans, the veg are just the right side of crunchy, while the fish is lovely and succulent thanks to all that basting (and - yes - actually cooked through!). Going half-and-half on smoked and unsmoked cod works pretty well for an accident of chance, adding some handy variety to what could otherwise have been a slightly bland dish.

And even the suspicious-looking sauce is fine once it's been drizzled over the fish and veg for serving. It's not a terribly interesting flavour (lest it overpower the fish, I suppose), but there's none of that gloopy sweetness I've come to expect and fear from sweet and sour, so that's a minor win in itself. If I were making it again, I'd probably use more soy sauce and chuck in some red chillies and basically make it into a darker, less authentic, but more satisfying dish.

Anyway, like several of the Random Kitchen selections so far, this ends up being more "a different way of preparing and arranging the kind of meal I'd consider making anyway" than something entirely new and exciting - but hey, that's useful too. And the calorie count is commendable, particularly compared with the fish and cheese pie on the adjacent page...

One-word verdict: Wholesome.

If you're worried that I seem to be enjoying this healthy food rather too much, you might have a point - it's fuelling my training for the Royal Parks Half Marathon, which I'll be running in early October to raise money for Parkinson's UK. If you're enjoying The Random Kitchen, I'd be very grateful if you'd consider donating to my fundraising page. Thanks!