Week 41: Courgette, Tomato and Basil Pie with Goat's Cheese

The book: Masterclass (James Martin)

The recipe: p22, "Courgette, Tomato and Basil Pie with Goat's Cheese"

You've noticed it too, right? It's very much the elephant in the room: the Random Kitchen project just keeps on bumping into pies and pastry products. There are clearly a lot of them nestled among my 22 cookbooks.

Maybe it's a reflection of my interests, maybe it's down to the limited imagination of cookbook authors, or perhaps it's simply because pies are the kind of thing that can look quite impressive without necessarily requiring that much effort, hence making them ideal cookbook fodder.

In any case, here we are again, with another "pie" that isn't actually a pie pie, more "some stuff assembled in a dish with a sheet of puff pastry layered on top". Still, it's a properly vegetarian recipe (subject to how the goat's cheese is made, I suppose) and that's something we don't encounter too often on this blog, so let's give it a go!

Paj time, it's paj time, paj moment

The prep: Despite my pie fatigue, I'm so eager to get going that I find myself at the Lewisham Shopping Centre a whole quarter of an hour before the shops actually open. (Oops.) Fortunately, the trusty café in the central holding pen is already open for business, so I settle in and nurse an Americano while people-watching and listening to the greatest misses of Eurovision.

The recent demise of our fridge-freezer meant all those lovely leftovers of Jus-Rol pastry from previous Random Kitchen adventures had to be consigned to the great dustbin in the, er, backyard - so ready-made puff pastry is the first thing on my shopping list, along with the various vegetables that we don't have in the new and mercifully functional fridge. Among them are "banana shallots", which cause me a moment of panic before I do a Google image search and realise that's what they are.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should note at this point that the actual name of this recipe ends "...with Dorstone Cheese". James Martin kindly explains that Dorstone is a cheese he "came across once at a farmer's market", so the chances of me getting my hands on it in Lewisham are predictably low, but he adds that any "firm goat's cheese" will suffice - "even a French Crottin." (No, me either.) In any case, I expect the local Sainsbury's to only stock the soft and spreadable variety, so I'm pleasantly surprised when it yields a firm block of St Helen's Farm that appears ideal for the job at hand. Hurrah! 

The making: The courgettes are topped, tailed and sliced lengthways. Next they're oiled, laid on a baking tray and popped in the oven until browning slightly, whereupon they're removed and left on the side to cool.

A drained jar of sunblush tomatoes, the chopped shallots, a couple of cloves of garlic and half a dozen large basil leaves (torn) are mixed in a bowl and seasoned. The baked courgettes are then added. (This is where the first bit of confusion sets in: at no point does the recipe ask me to chop the courgettes into smaller pieces than the long lengthways strips that went into the oven, but the image accompanying the recipe and basic logic both suggest that they need to be sliced crossways too, so that's what I do.)

The goat's cheese is crumbled over the top of this mixture (the crumbling process requires a bit of pre-slicing too, or I'd be there all night), then the whole lot is tipped into an ovenproof dish.

Next, the pastry is rolled out a bit thinner so that it's 2cm wider than the dish all round. The edges of the dish are brushed with beaten egg, then the pastry is laid on top and pressed down onto the rim. The excess pastry is "trimmed away" and is presumably meant to be discarded, but again there's a disconnect between the text and the accompanying picture, in which the leftover pastry has clearly been shaped into a flower-like formation that adorns the middle of the pie. My kitchen skillz don't quite stretch that far (although, in retrospect, I could have used one of my animal-shaped cookie cutters - no elephants though), so I make do with a rudimentary five-pointed star.

The top of the pie is comprehensively brushed with the rest of the beaten egg, then into the oven it goes:

Arty angle betrays urgent need for oven cleaning

And out of the oven it comes:

Overhead view betrays historic kitchen surface charring incident

You'll have noticed a certain degree of... let's call it "egg pooling" on the surface of the finished pie. (That's what you get when the content of the pie is lumpy rather than saucy.) It is set and solid, but not quite as much as it ought to be, and it's not especially pleasing on the eye. A few minutes longer in the oven would have fixed that, but then the edges would have been burnt, so you know, it's undercooked swings and carcinogenic roundabouts.

The eating: Hey, it's not bad! I know that's probably to be expected considering I like all of the ingredients, and I might have expected the chunks of goat's cheese to have melted a bit more than they have, but their mild yet robust flavour is a great accompaniment to the olive oil antipasti vibe of the vegetables, and the basil is a tangible enough presence to merit its status in the recipe name without ever threatening to overwhelm.

Since we're doing this as an evening meal, I serve the pie with some side veg that are also selected largely at random (tarragon carrots and oven-roasted asparagus, for the record).

Contents: Incoherent.

While far from an error, this mishmash of flavours ends up detracting from the inherent pie-ness of the pie. This becomes apparent when we go back for the inevitable seconds - it's much better on its own, which leads me to believe that the filling would be more successful if deployed in individual tarts (with actual bases ffs) and served at room temperature in a lunch context.

Still, it's a pretty successful kitchen experience all round. Relatively simple preparation (partly because it's not a proper pie, obviously) yields a satisfying outcome and a hearty bit of vegetarian fare - even if the recipe does require some reading between the lines and some outright leaps of faith. James Martin's promise to "make your home cooking easier" really shouldn't give him carte blanche to just leave stuff out altogether...

Eleven more weeks of this ridiculous project to go. How many more pies and pastry products do you reckon we'll encounter between now and the end of the year? (And could one of them be a dessert, please?)

One-word verdict: Paj.

Week 40: Kale, Chorizo and Potato Hash

The book: Riverford Farm Cook Book

The recipe: p230, "Kale, Chorizo and Potato Hash"

This post would have turned up sooner, but let's be honest, there's no way I was going to fire up the Random Kitchen number generator in its usual Sunday afternoon slot after having run the Royal Parks Half Marathon in the morning. Especially when the prospect of heading straight to Byron for some burger- and milkshake-shaped refuelling was raised instead. Readers, there are times when arcane blog-based cooking concepts simply have to wait.

A few days later and finally ready to face the kitchen again, we encounter a book in serious need of redemption after cursing us with the legendarily bad Spiced Cucumber back in Week 17. This time round, things are looking up right from the first glance at the recipe name, chorizo being famed for its ability to improve any dish. At the same time, I hear the faintest tinkling of warning bells at the mention of kale, an ingredient that tends to challenge my oh-so-Guardianista credentials with its inherent bitterness and toughness, much as I acknowledge its healthy nutritional properties.

And for all I may be a fully paid-up member of the 48%-er liberal elite (and a proud citizen of nowhere), I'm still a northerner, so the Riverford insistence on describing this as a "supper" dish rankles somewhat. Nevertheless, we plough onwards, boosted by the prospect of some hearty potato and chorizo to lift the post-race spirits and soothe those still-tired legs.

The prep: Feeling exceedingly lazy, I buy pre-diced own-brand chorizo instead of the picante Revilla chorizo ring I'd normally grab from the supermarket cooler shelves. (This will turn out to be an error.) Curly kale is abundant and affordable right now, while the fridge is already overflowing with potatoes and onions (thanks, Lewisham Market).

The recipe also makes a serving suggestion that meets with my approval, namely topping off the dish with an egg each. It neglects to include eggs in the ingredient list, however, so I endup overlooking this when doing the shopping. Fortunately, Sam is happy to pop out to the local Tesco Express while I'm in the middle of the cooking phase, returning mere minutes later with half a dozen eggs, a Crunchie and two Wispa Gold. Now that's efficient.

#rungry

The making: The recipe calls for cooked potatoes (cut into 2cm dice), so I start by boiling up a pan of spuds then leaving them to cool on the side.

Pre-chopped as it is, the kale is briefly blanched in a pan of boiling salted water, drained, refreshed in cold water, drained again and squeezed out until it's about as dry as it's ever going to get.

Next, olive oil is heated in a large frying pan and the diced chorizo is added and cooked for ten minutes until lightly browned on all sides. Alarm bells are already ringing here: if there's one thing I know, it's that you tend not to need to add oil to a type of sausage that's only too happy to give up its own, and indeed the pan is positively swimming in the stuff by the time the ten minutes are up.

The chorizo is set aside and a chopped onion and some garlic are cooked in the "chorizo fat" (even the recipe is basically admitting the oil is superfluous now) before the diced potato is added. The heat is turned up so that the potato gets some nice colour in it, and when the chorizo is subsequently returned to the pan, I can't deny that things are starting to look quite promising.

"I'm ready for my close-up now"

The kale is also added at this stage and the mixture is cooked slowly for a further ten minutes until everything is thoroughly heated through.

While this is happening, I turn my attention to the eggs. "Poached", the recipe says. "Bollocks to that", I reply. Like many people, I simply cannot poach eggs. None of the techniques recommended - vortexes of simmering water, the addition of vinegar, Delia's "just take the pan off the heat for ten minutes and let them cook by themselves" approach - have ever resulted in anything other than a disastrous mishmash of water-infused yolk and spindly tendrils of egg white that, while notionally edible, score a big fat nul points on the visual presentation and mouthfeel front.

So fried eggs it is. (One sunny side up, one over easy, just because.) Same end result in terms of the yolky goodness that should hopefully end up running its way through the finished product.

And that's it - the warm contents of the pan are plated up, the eggs are carefully slid on top, and we're ready to fill our bellies.

The eating: Mixed reviews, I think it's fair to say. More so than for almost any Random Kitchen experiment so far. While I wouldn't claim to love it (it's a fairly simple - ahem - suppertime dish, after all), I must be firmly in post-run recovery mode because I'm happy to shovel it into my gob unquestioningly. And then Sam raises several salient points that I find myself unable to dispute:

• It's really quite salty. This is not unconnected to the fact that there's a lot of chorizo in the dish and it doesn't taste of a great deal other than salt. My bad for being a lazy B'Stard and indulging in inferior procurement techniques - back to the Revilla next time.
  
• The kale is really quite bitter. This is a problem I acknowledged right from the get-go, and in the recipe's defence, it does note that any kind of cabbage or even Brussels sprouts would be an acceptable alternative.
• The whole thing doesn't really hang together. OK, it's a hash, so it's always going to be basically "some stuff thrown together in a pan" (actually, this really is just pyttipanna, isn't it?), but some kind of binding ingredient - a bit of grated cheese, something closer to a sauce than mere chorizo oil, or even a "stickier" vegetable such as sliced and soft-fried leeks - would make it feel more coherent.

Even the egg on top is a bit "meh", with the meagre yolk yielding little in the way of the indulgent stickiness I hoped it would. Maybe I should try poaching next time after all - at least that'd give us some visual LOLs.

Steamy fraternal twins

Having said that, Sam does suggest his antipathy might simply be because he's going off chorizo a bit. No, really. He actually said that.

In any case, a mixed bag, all told. Like with the other Riverford recipes I've used outside of the Random Kitchen project, there's a certain basic rusticness to this that manages to be both a positive and a negative. It could do with being more decadent, in other words - I'm thinking a sprinkling of parmesan, at the very least - but it could also do with me buying better ingredients in the first place, so I'm willing to give it another chance with those wrongs righted.

And hey - it's still a damn sight better than the Spiced Cucumber, plus we've got Crunchie and Wispa Gold for afters. Life's okay.

One-word verdict: Polarising.

Week 39: Braised Beef with Bacon and Mushrooms

The book: Good Housekeeping Easy To Make Complete Cookbook

The recipe: p146, "Braised Beef with Bacon and Mushrooms"

Spoiler alert: the recipe says "Serves 4". It did not.

The last few weeks of the Random Kitchen project have thrown up some, shall we say, more traditional fare. Perhaps this reflects the sadly unadventurous nature of my cookbook shelf?

In any case, while shepherd's pie or side-dish couscous have certainly been known to crop up in my standard kitchen oeuvre, I tend to have neither the desire nor the patience to bash together a slow-cooked beef casserole of any variety, so I'm not going to complain about this week's opportunity to make further use of the heavy-duty kitchenware I purchased for Nigella's stuff floating in wine a couple of months ago.

Once more, this turns out to be something of an exercise in creative title-writing - as you'll see, there's no real reason why the mushrooms and bacon should be promoted to lead billing ahead of any of the other supporting ingredients here. But hey, who cares as long as there's plenty of beef?

Um, Google, I said beef...

The prep: The recipe allows smoked pancetta as an alternative to the titular bacon, so that's an alternative I grasp with both hands, because who wouldn't? The ingredient list is otherwise quite plain and hearty - an onion, a couple of carrots, a couple of parsnips, a couple of leeks, some chestnut mushrooms - and there's not much else I need to buy in for the occasion.

I consider replacing the requisite redcurrant jelly with lingonberry jam, best known in this country as the cranberry-esque accompaniment to IKEA meatballs, since our fridge always contains a jar of it in case of köttbullar emergencies. In the interests of accuracy, though (and because it's only 80p), I splash the cash on the good old-fashioned British variety, which we'll no doubt soon be exporting to a grateful France.

When it comes to the meat, I decide to take a punt and go one step lower than the humble braising steak called for by the recipe. If we're slow-cooking it anyway, let's see how some supermarket value-brand frying steak holds up. (Sustainability in farming, you say? What is this?)

The making: Shamelessly ignoring the very first line of the method, I hold off on heating the oven for now, as it's clear the pre-oven steps will take a while even allowing for having prepped the vegetables in advance. Anyway, the pancetta is fried until golden, then the leeks are added for a couple of minutes. This mixture is removed and set aside, then the sliced beef is fried in some olive oil until coloured and sealed on all sides. Then this is also set aside - see what I mean about the pre-oven steps? - and a chopped onion is fried in the residual oil and meat juices before the chunkily-sliced carrots and parsnips are added for a few minutes, during which time I finally set the oven going.

The beef is then returned to the casserole and heated through, with a tablespoon of flour added "to soak up the juices" (though there aren't really any left at this stage since they've all been picked up by the veg, which I suppose is a good sign). Next, 300ml of red wine and 300ml of water are added along with a couple of rounded tablespoons of the redcurrant jelly, and the whole thing is seasoned and brought to the boil. Lid firmly secured, the casserole is now ready to go in the oven for two hours at 170 degrees - not slow-cooking in the day-long sense, but not exactly rushing things either.

Once those two hours are up, the leek and pancetta mixture (remember that?) is stirred into the pot along with the mushrooms (halved rather than sliced, for further chunkiness), and back into the oven it all goes for a further hour. And that's it - the dish is ready to serve, so I yoink it out of the oven and prepare to garnish with chopped flat-leaf parsley as the recipe recommends.

That's my dinner, then - what are you having?

Unlike the tasty but time-consuming galette from way back in Week 9, this recipe really does satisfy the "Easy To Make" element of the cookbook's title. Sure, there's quite a bit of peeling and chopping to begin with, but we're not exactly talking about skilled labour here, and after that it's as straightforward as you like. Top marks on that front, then. But what about...

The eating? Well, first things first: the cheapskate beef is a triumph, lovely and tender and ready to fall apart at the slightest hint of contact with a fork, so fuck paying more, frankly.

That's not what makes this dish really work, though. What elevates it beyond your average beef casserole is the interplay of the flavours, from the subtle richness that comes with using a sensible quantity of wine (I'm looking at you, Nigella) to the smoky infusion from the pancetta (and the pancetta fat that's melted away into the sauce, natch) combined with the sweetness of the parsnip - and of the redcurrant jelly too, I suppose, not that you can particularly taste the latter, but that's probably a good thing.

It only strikes me afterwards that no stock is used, so it's not overly salty - often the Achilles heel of stews and casseroles. And the quantities of liquid involved mean it's not overly saucy either, unlike the aforementioned Nigella aberration, yet the ingredients are still cooked to tender perfection.

For all this may not be sophisticated cuisine, this is basically entirely heroic in pretty much every respect, and it makes me wonder why I don't make this kind of thing more often. I work from home, after all, so I have both time and a sturdy casserole dish on my side. Though I suppose there is the small matter of the long-term waistline impact...

Welcome to Braised Beef. Twinned with: itself.

While the recipe doesn't make any serving suggestions (as the above photo neatly illustrates), if I were making it again - and I will - then I suppose it could benefit from being paired with some crusty bread \o/ or a green vegetable, or you could chuck in some potato to flesh things out a bit.

Alternatively, you could do what we did and essentially accompany it with itself. Braised beef with a side portion of even more braised beef, followed by second helpings of braised beef. The perfect menu.

Serves 2, in other words - and only if you're quick.

One-word verdict: YES

Not that this meat-heavy recipe helped much, but I'm currently carb-loading for the Royal Parks Half Marathon, which I'll be running to raise money for Parkinson's UK and all the excellent work they do. It's nearly race day and I need all the support I can get, so if you're enjoying The Random Kitchen, I'd be superbly grateful if you'd consider donating to my fundraising page. Thanks!

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!