It's hard to believe this is the last Random Kitchen I'll be doing in our current house. If the walls could talk, what tales they'd tell of swan meringues, microwaved vegetables, and loud bouts of swearing interspersed with manic laughter.
Since it's about to join the pile of items that will not be making the move with us (sorry fans), it's entirely appropriate that Barbara Kafka's Microwave Gourmet makes a farewell appearance this month courtesy of the random number generator - and with a microwave dessert, no less. What a treat!
But let's start at the very beginning - a very good place to start...
◘ THE STARTER ◘
The book: Good Housekeeping Easy To Make Complete Cookbook
The recipe: p12, "Chicken and Salsa Verde Crostini"
We've had some decent experiences with this cookbook so far, albeit nothing mindblowing, which feels in keeping with the resolutely solid Good Housekeeping ethos. This starter both looks and sounds most acceptable too. I'm never quite sure what makes crostini different to other forms of "nibbly stuff on a toasted base", but you can't go too far wrong with what is essentially party food, even if a housewarming party for our new pad might have to wait until the world is a bit more normal again.
For a "30-minute recipe", the ingredients list on this one is rather daunting, although it turns out that a lot of it is the stuff that's getting blitzed together to make the salsa.
In fact, let's begin there, even if the recipe doesn't: I take several tablespoons of chopped coriander, mint and basil and pop them in a food processor along with some mustard, three anchovy fillets, a tablespoon of capers, plenty of olive oil, the juice of half a lemon, and a clove of garlic (well, a clove's-worth of garlic paste - I'm lazy and the end result is going to be a liquid anyway).
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| Might have gone a bit heavy on the mustard, actually |
The next step in the process is exactly as you might expect, with the following outcome:
Next, I take a handful of walnuts, toast them in a dry pan and set them aside before chopping them up once they've cooled a bit.
There's a walnut theme to this recipe, actually, because it also wants to use walnut bread as the crostini base. I tend to think of that as having a rounder form and I'd have thought something more baguette-ish would be closer to the right size and shape for the purpose - though I suppose bread can be any shape really, can't it? Anyway, I don't have time to go round a bunch of local independents (soz) but there is one supermarket that has a space on the shelf for walnut bread, and that's the Sainsbury's in the Lewisham shopping centre. Sadly, that space is very much empty when I visit. I end up having a nice conversation with a member of staff about food delivery delays, pingdemics and such, the upshot of which is "you're not getting a walnut loaf this side of the weekend, pal".
I'm not baking one either (it is HIGH SUMMER are you CRAZY), so instead I make do with its spiritual cousin once removed: a dark rye loaf from the M&S bakery. This wants to be "cut into 15 x 1cm slices" before being sprinkled with sea salt, but it isn't quite long enough to support those numbers, so instead I go with some more bite-sized half-slices.
And if you think I went heavy on the mustard earlier, just wait till you see my sea salt sprinkling skills...
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| Bagsy the ones in the top-right and bottom-right. Salt is awesome. |
These bready bites are grilled "until lightly toasted" (I must remember not to do this on the Foreman, it never really works), and then it's time for assembly!
Each piece of toasted bread is topped with a slice or two of cooked chicken breast (straight out of a packet from the chiller cabinet at Asda - thank you, gym bunnies who need lazy protein snacks), then a dollop of the salsa verde and a couple of slices of chopped sundried tomatoes, then the aforementioned walnuts and a "sprinkling" (here we go again) of flat-leaf parsley to garnish.
I dislike this last part, because herb "garnishes" invariably make it look like you've just accidentally tipped some leaves onto your dinner (this theme will recur later), but what the heck. This is the end result:
And hey, that's not too bad, right? Other than the leaves, like I said.
I'm pleased to report that these crostini eat very nicely too. As foreshadowed, I have gone a bit heavy on the mustard in the salsa verde - the recipe called for Dijon, whereas I used some medium-strength Polish mustard I had in the house in the honest assumption that it'd be a near enough equivalent, but it's clearly a bit more potent. Still, it's not enough to kill off the general flavour profile, which is very decent indeed.
Even as someone who likes walnuts, I don't think this recipe needs both walnut bread and a walnut garnish, so I'm reasonably happy to have been forced to use the dark rye instead. What I will say is that, if you were serving these as party canapés, the walnut pieces would immediately fall off and go absolutely everywhere. Be prepared for some vacuuming, in other words. If you do manage to get them into your mouth, though, they add a satisfying crunch to proceedings.
Then again, that could just be the excess sea salt...
One-word verdict: Gnarly.
◘ THE MAIN COURSE ◘
The book: My red recipe folder
The recipe: "Green Lentil and Coconut Curry"
I sometimes feel like I'm in a constant pass-agg battle with clients and proofreaders over the merits of the Oxford comma, but in this case it is worth pointing out that this recipe does not call for a green coconut (though such a thing does apparently exist).
Actually, it barely calls for coconut at all. But we'll get to that.
This is a recipe I found, downloaded and printed years ago, not that I have any active memory of doing so. (Presumably this was before I bought Madhur's Curry Easy, which isn't short of a lentil recipe or twelve.) It's the second time we've dipped into this folder of random curry recipes recently, but that's the nature of the project for you - while I'm allowed to veto things like sauces, condiments or live lobsters, "that's a bit repetitive" isn't usually a criterion for dismissal, otherwise we wouldn't have had so many deeply average desserts involving meringues and strawberries recently.
What I will say about this recipe - and there isn't much to say about it - is that it involves a technique point that catches me a little off-guard. I've made more veggie curries than I care to remember, and they basically all involve frying up onions, spices and maybe some tomatoes to create a base, before tipping in some cooked lentils and/or other ingredients.
Here, though, I start to cook up a bunch of well-rinsed lentils in a whole litre and a half of vegetable stock...
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| Yum |
...then prepare the base in a frying pan, this involving an onion, garlic, ginger, a chopped green chilli, mustard seeds, some curry powder, some garam masala, plenty of tomato purée and - here we go - half a cup of coconut milk.
Yep, that's the "coconut" content that merits a mention in the recipe title. Well, okay. You're the boss, long-forgotten website from 2009.
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| Yum |
Now here's the weird part: I tip the contents of the frying pan into the big pot with the lentils and the stock. Hm. The lentils have been cooking for 15 minutes at this stage, meaning they've absorbed some of the liquid, but really not all that much - and so, yes, the result is somewhat goop-like.
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| If all else fails it'll make a nice soup |
There's another 20 minutes of cooking time to go, though, and that - plus a pause in proceedings while Sam goes for a run - is enough to let things thicken into something recognisably curry-like.
There are two steps remaining before I serve up, and the first is to add two big handfuls of spinach leaves. You're thinking what I'm thinking, aren't you? Why wouldn't you call this a green lentil and spinach curry? Your guess is as good as mine.
Anyway, the final step involves some coriander "to garnish", but because I have no desire to photograph yet more food with greenery strewn atop it, I stir the coriander leaves (and some stalks - as mentioned, I'm lazy) through the curry before plating up.
"Serve with brown rice", the recipe says, so I do.
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| And a roti for good measure |
Between the rustic nature of the lentil goop and the absence of any real heat (just that solitary green chilli I mentioned earlier), it's clear that this is meant to fall more at the "warming and hearty" end of the culinary scale, but the garam masala, the curry powder and the earthiness of the cooked lentils make it a pleasantly rewarding eat. I choose to add a dollop of lime pickle to give it a bit more contrast, but it's not essential.
It's a little on the austere side - you'd ideally want it as one of several dishes on the table, I suppose - and there is absolutely no sign of any coconut flavour in the end product, but tailor this to be a teensy bit more exciting (it could easily cope with twice or three times as much spinach, for instance) and I'd be happy enough to add this to my arsenal of simple midweek meals.
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| Just as long as someone else does the washing-up |
One-word verdict: Earthy.
◘ THE DESSERT ◘
The book: Microwave Gourmet (Barbara Kafka)
The recipe: p352, "Thanksgiving Pudding"
If anyone wants this book, holler now - it's going outside our house as soon as I hit "Publish" on this post, and I'm sure the good people of Lewisham will be fighting each other to take it home with them.
I feel a little bad getting rid of it, because this silly project has never really allowed us to do a deep dive into its pages. There are some interesting-sounding dishes in there (or at least not terrible-sounding), whereas we've had to make do with apple sauce and well, you know. On the other hand, this third spin of the random wheel has given us yet another selection that fails to get the taste buds going - "Thanksgiving Pudding", whatever it may be, isn't something I'd be lining up to try even at the right time of year - so perhaps it's only right that Barbara's days are numbered.
This recipe is the first in a section entitled "Steamed Puddings", not a category I would readily associate with the microwave. All the more reason to get stuck in, then. Starting with a quote from the lady herself:
"I'm afraid I've got rather satiated with the rich, traditional pies associated with Thanksgiving - pumpkin, pecan and mincemeat. Wanting something equally good but a less heavy, I devised this steamed pudding. Pumpkin can replace the acorn squash, if you like."
I do like, because I've never so much as heard of an acorn squash. One thing I've learned from being a long-standing Riverford veg box customer, however, is that there more types of squash than you could possibly imagine. And as pretty and varied as they look on the outside, they're mostly quite similar once you cut them open and dig out their flesh (mmm, flesh). The internet assures me that I can use butternut as a perfectly adequate substitute here, anyway, so that's what I'm doing.
As the above photo suggests, the basic principle behind this dish is to use the squash as a vehicle for carrying the flavours of sugar and autumnal-going-on-wintry spices.
I begin by liberally buttering a "ceramic dish or pudding basin" - this will have to do, even if we usually use it to serve crisps in.
The first deployment of the microwave today is to zap the cubed squash for eight minutes until it's nicely soft. I then set it aside to cool a little.
Meanwhile, I ready the food processor and tip in the dark brown sugar and the cubed unsalted butter. These are blitzed into a paste that looks every bit as appetising as you might hope.
That done, the squash cubes are added along with some double cream, a couple of eggs (I forgot to include them in the photo above), sifted plain flour, vanilla essence, and what I can only describe as tentative quantities of cinnamon and allspice.
This is blended to create a "smooth mixture" that gets poured into the prepared bowl, which is tightly covered with cling film.
Because I'm making half quantities here (as the recipe permits), that means halving the cooking time too, so the above goes into the microwave for a mere 4½ minutes "until set".
I'm deeply concerned by the additional note from Barbara saying "if the pudding looks moist in the centre, that is fine". This feels like it's going to end up a sloppy liquid mess. But no - the eggs, flour and other ingredients clearly do their job, because what emerges after 4½ minutes looks well set and has even come away from the edges of the dish slightly, suggesting that it'll tip out onto a plate without problems.
And, after being allowed to cool slightly, it does tip out onto a plate without problems!
There may be other problems, though...
I mean, wow.
Granted, I didn't use a properly deep pudding basin so the flatness of the end result is partially my fault, but I don't feel like a better shape would have made this substantially easier on the eye.
Ever the optimist, Barbara suggests an "optional" garnish of candied orange peel and/or pomegranate seeds. I'm not wasting the latter on this nonsense, but I can definitely stretch to the former, so let's see if that improves the visual side of things at all.
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| That'd be a no |
This is wonderful, really. It's everything I wanted from a final encounter with the Microwave Gourmet - baffling and bizarre and uniquely unappealing.
Regrettably, we also have to eat the thing. "Optional" double cream isn't an option I'm going to pass up any time soon, and so here's the plate-up pic:
And hey, you know, that's starting to look a bit more like actual food. If I thought the pudding was chocolate, say, I might be happy to get stuck into that. Unfortunately, I know it's made of butternut squash.
I should be fair and cut Barbara some slack, because it actually tastes okay. I suppose it would, really; there's enough sugar and other good stuff in there that it can't be completely wrong. And the "steamed pudding" consistency is authentic enough, without any of the faff of actual steaming.
There are two main reasons it only tastes "okay". Firstly, the spices: there's a tiny hint of allspice and cinnamon at the edges here, but if I were making this again (spoiler: I will not be making this again), I'd go all in on the spices to try and perk things up. And secondly, despite being comprehensively blended prior to cooking, the flavours in the pudding are uneven throughout - some mouthfuls are sweeter and nicer than others. I presume the different ingredient densities have played a part here, but that's a shame.
All in all, then, this "Thanksgiving Pudding" (still not a thing) is far from a disaster by the time it actually reaches our mouths, but it's fair to say it doesn't sell itself especially well along the way. That's three strikes and you're out - sorry, Babs.
One-word verdict: Unthankful.
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