Random Kitchen: Lockdown Edition

"By popular demand" is a loaded phrase, but I can't deny what's right there in black on white.

On Sunday I innocently posted a photo of my dinner on Instagram like the Instatwat I am. Almost before I knew it, the possibility of Random Kitchen making a return had been firstly raised, then swiftly endorsed by several of my friends.

I issued a weak protest or two, of course. Sourcing the necessary ingredients (and sometimes even the necessary implements) for Random Kitchen had been a pain in the arse the first time round, and that was before we were living under lockdown rules and I'd limited myself to one big weekly shop, rather than the daily stroll around Lewisham's finest stores that I'd previously permitted myself as a homeworker lacking on the human interaction front. In other words, this would clearly involve more planning than I'm used to, not to mention a healthy slug of improvisation along the way. I would also need a right of veto for those dishes containing ingredients that can't be reasonably substituted (but then I always did have one of those where live lobsters were concerned, say).

Still, I can't deny that my cookbooks have been gathering dust again since 2016's original Random Kitchen adventure - even the two (two!) new additions in the meantime, Rachel Khoo's The Little Swedish Kitchen and Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem, haven't been getting the use they ought to. And there are still countless pages of recipes, good, bad and ugly, across the 25-ish tomes in my collection that I've never even looked at, let alone considered making. So why not fire up random.org and spin the wheel again?

Truth be told, I'd been idly thinking about it anyway. After all, what else am I going to do while we wait for things to return to some kind of normal? I'm only too aware of the pitfalls - making your own lockdown life more difficult with a self-imposed cookery challenge is one thing, but there's also that slightly eerie feeling you get from doing something frivolous while the world around you is going through something horrendous. On the other hand, times like these are about finding ways of preserving your sanity too.

Or preserving other people's sanity by undertaking ridiculous tasks for their entertainment. Whatever works.

So let's do it. I'll unleash the finger of fate before our next big Asda shop. A cookbook will be chosen at random, a recipe will be chosen at random from within that cookbook, and we'll see how it all pans out in terms of actual feasibility. The less feasible, the more entertaining, I suspect. It's all good.

I am not doing live Random Kitchen sessions on Zoom though.

Well, perhaps some celebratory meringue swans when we're all finally released from captivity...

Anyway. Random Kitchen: Lockdown Edition. Bring it on! I think...

Meringue Swans

The book: Everyday Novelli (Jean-Christophe Novelli)

The recipe: p74, "Swan Meringues"

Well, it had to happen. Ever since my first post about the world's least accurately named cookbook, Everyday Novelli, the standout recipe for swan meringues (or meringue swans, as I'm calling them here because that's how we've come to know and love them) has been hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles. And with four whole days of Easter at my disposal, what better time to finally let the thread snap and embrace my inner culinary ornithologist?

So I did it. Or at least, I tried to do it. Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Everything about this "recipe" is designed to frustrate, from imprecise (or missing) instructions right through to the flawed nature of the entire bloody concept in the first place.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. First, let us all share in the avian goodness, for Novelli has been kind enough to publish the recipe on his website for all to enjoy. You may wish keep this to hand as I proceed. You may also wish to note Novelli's opening words: "This is one of the most therapeutic dishes to make."

We'll see about that.

The prep: At this point it's worth saying that I've never actually made meringue before, which probably isn't a great starting point. Regardless, I diligently acquire a piping kit with various attachments:

...and I'm basically ready to go on the equipment front, having mercifully already invested in an electric whisk earlier in the Random Kitchen project. (Seriously, how did people ever come up with things like meringue in the days when hand-beating was required? Wouldn't you just give up and do something better with your time instead?)

Ingredient-wise, the standard meringue ingredients (eggs, sugars) are supplemented by dark chocolate for the creepy swan eyes, and a "selection of red fruits" for decoration. Keen-eyed readers will have noticed that the swan in Novelli's picture also has a pink beak, but no mention is ever made as to how this should be achieved. Similarly, those green-apple "wings"? There's nothing in the ingredients or the method to suggest that they even exist. And don't get me started on that dollop of squirty cream that looks like it's holding everything together, yet remains conspicuous by its absence from the recipe.

This could be a long day.

Except it's going to be more than a day, because Novelli's interpretation of "everyday" cooking involves making the swan body parts then leaving them to set for 24-36 hours. As if this whole thing wasn't ridiculous enough already. I suppose I understand why - if you baked them, even on a low temperature, they'd go that meringue-y yellow-brown colour and that's not especially swan-like or elegant - but come on, this claims to be a book "full of recipes that look and taste delicious but are easy to recreate". Like waking up in the middle of the night to feed porridge to mussels, a 36-hour lead time for some meringue limbs is not my definition of "easy to recreate".

The making: I whisk up a storm with five large egg whites, then add in the caster sugar and a pinch of salt. So far, so meringuey.

Icing sugar and a little cornflour are then sifted and carefully folded into the glossy mixture until any lumps have been incorporated. This is quite hard to achieve without inadvertently beating the air out of the mixture, thereby defeating the point of all that whisking, but I just about get there in the end.

Next, I'm asked to "line a baking tray with greaseproof paper". Considering this recipe makes 15 swans, which corresponds to 15 necks and 30 wings, I think I'm going to need more than "a" baking tray, J-C.

A first batch of the meringue mix is stuffed into a piping bag with a plain nozzle, and I begin the onerous task of piping some swan necks. Which, as it turns out, isn't so onerous - they're basically just an elongated "S" shape, after all. I'm told to pipe "one beak on each end, so that if one breaks off, you can use the other", but at no point am I told how to actually pipe a beak, so I just go with a blob-like dollop of meringue that's a bit thicker than the rest of the neck.

Piping hot

I'm going to reproduce the next line of the recipe in full for your enjoyment:

"It doesn't matter if the quantity of meringue produces more necks than you need since it is difficult to remove them from the greaseproof paper without breaking and this will give you some room for error."

I may not have done a literature degree, but even I can tell that's some serious fucking foreshadowing right there.

Nevertheless, I continue by refilling the piping bag (this time with a star-shaped nozzle) and piping the wings. How do you pipe meringue wings, you might ask? Why, you do one half "using a left to right motion" and the other half "using a right to left motion". That's more than enough in the way of instructions, right?

Fuck's sake.

Anyway, since Novelli is determined not to help me any more than the minimum (and barely even that), I try to loosely recreate what's shown in the accompanying photo. The "tails" of my wings aren't remotely long enough, but I've never done this before so frankly I'm delighted to have anything at all to show for my efforts. In due course, I end up with several baking trays full of not altogether terrible swan parts.

And some day you will bake like I bake

I assume they're the right size because, of course, Novelli hasn't given me any guidance on that front either. In any case, they're duly left to set "in a cool dry place (not the fridge) for 24–36 hours".

It's the next day now, and some careful prodding and poking in non-obvious places suggests that the wings aren't really setting terribly well (I daren't even think about the necks). Which kind of makes sense - neither heat nor cold are being applied to the meringue limbs, so why should they react in any useful way? To give myself some options for later in the day, I stick one batch in the fridge to see if that helps at all (spoiler: it doesn't).

I watch a film, I go for a 15km run, I make a big pot of curry for dinner, but eventually there's no avoiding the task at hand - it's time to assemble the swans.

Predictably, this is where it all goes wrong.

I start by melting some dark chocolate and applying the "eyes" with a cocktail stick. They look beady and rustic, but broadly effective. Next, it's the turn of the beaks, which - in the absence of any mention of ingredients or method - I endeavour to recreate by brushing on a bit of pink food colouring. This makes my swans look like they've been punched in the face or are just really bad at applying lipstick.

Hello sailor

Still, I'm sure they'll be fine once they've been removed from the greaseproof paper, which I'm supposed to achieve "using a palette knife, being careful not to break the meringue" (you don't fucking say).

Joy of joys, none of the parts are properly set yet. The wings are incredibly delicate and only too keen to crack and disintegrate at the merest touch...

Oh good

...but eventually Sam does manage to successfully loosen a couple of them without breakage. Their undersides may still have a decidedly soggy consistency, but they're usable, and that's the main thing.

By now, I am sceptical as to the prospect of any of the necks making it off the paper in one piece - their narrow shape is brittle by its very nature, after all - and about four necks are duly sacrificed before we finally, miraculously, manage to loosen one intact. (Meanwhile, the ones I put in the fridge have basically turned to mush, which is an unexpected yet somehow entirely unsurprising turn of events.)

I quickly retrieve a pre-chilled plate from the freezer and set a scoop of ice cream in the middle of it. You'd think Jean-Christophe might impart some great secret for assembling the finished swan, but no - the sole instruction is "Carefully press the swan’s wings on to the ice-cream, then add the neck and head." Aha. And how exactly am I supposed to "add" the neck? I'm using soft scoop ice cream, but we've just established that the meringue parts are incredibly fragile and liable to break apart at the slightest pressure, so shoving the neck into the ice cream is out of the question. The photo accompanying the recipe provides little to no assistance, since it shows the neck apparently miraculously floating in a sea of cream.

So I cut a slit in the ice cream and wedge the neck in that way.

It may not be elegant, but it just about works - our solo swan is battered and bruised but basically upright.

Now it's time for the "decoration", starting with a couple of miserable wings, since I happen to have a green apple available:

Probably a bit thick, but they're not even supposed to exist so hey

...and continuing with a scattering of berries, none of which especially want to sit on the swan (maybe that's where the never-mentioned cream comes in) so they'll just have to sit near the swan.

And we're done. Or as near done as we're ever going to be.

Ladies and gentlemen, a meringue swan.

Ta-fucking-dah

It's not great, is it? But at this stage in proceedings it feels like an absolute bloody triumph.

We even feel emboldened enough to try and loosen another set of wings and one of the few remaining necks from the greaseproof paper, only for disaster to strike at the assembly stage:

It hurts so greatly

A valiant attempt to use ice cream as neck glue fails to have the desired effect:

...and so one of us is going to have to make do with consuming some deformed swan parts rather than a coherent meringue bird. A deconstructed swan, if you will. So be it.

All the other body parts I've made are either already broken or a load of useless mush, and my nerves are basically frazzled by this stage anyway, so fuck it. Let's eat.

The eating: It tastes like ice cream, meringue and fruit. Like Eton Mess, in other words. Which is precisely what I'll be making with the rest of the body parts.

Swan graveyard

So that's just terrific, you know?

Honestly, words cannot begin to express the sheer disparity between the effort involved in making these swan meringues and the pleasure of eating them. I do not understand how anyone could consider there to be any justification for ever undertaking a project like this.

To put it another way: I ended up making 7 swan necks and 8 sets of wings. We got one intact swan out of that. ONE SWAN.

There was a point in the process, after I'd piped the necks and wings, when I found myself quite enjoying the whole thing. Sure, my piping work wasn't great, but with a bit more practice I could do better in future, and assembling the swans didn't feel like it could be that hard.

And then, well, you know the rest.

 

At the end of the day, I maintain that I never stood any real chance of success here. The instructions provided are inadequate, the assistance given is minimal, and the whole concept is fatally flawed. Ultimately, this isn't really a recipe at all, it's just Jean-Christophe Novelli saying "making meringues into swan shapes sounds like a nice idea, why not try that? Good luck! [muffled laughter]"

But y'know, we got one meringue swan out of it. So there's that.

I hope you're all happy now.

"I will never forget," a teary-eyed Jean-Christophe recalls in the introduction to the recipe, "making this on my daughter Christina's first birthday." I can understand why. As if a one-year-old's birthday party isn't a terrifying enough prospect without voluntarily putting yourself through this while trying to placate a mob of screaming infants. No wonder he can't purge the experience from his memory.

J-C, you have my deepest sympathy. Now swan off.

One-word verdict:

A year of nonsense

"Grandpa, Grandpa! What do you remember about 2016?"
"2016? It was a traumatic time. Old certainties vanished. New, grim realities emerged. Sometimes it felt like your faith in everything good and right in the world was being tested to its very limits. And that was just the Spiced Cucumber..."

It's probably best I don't have kids really.

We're nicely into the new year now, and I've experienced my first Sunday without a Random Kitchen recipe to tackle, not to mention my first midweek workday without the subsequent blogging obligations. How does it feel? It's a curious mixture of relief and regret, truth be told. I'll miss the sheer terror of "having" to make, photograph and taste-test a new recipe every week - but it's nice being allowed to cook what I want, too. And I was running out of things to say by the end of it all.

For all I intend to occasionally return to the world of the Random Kitchen whenever I'm feeling culinarily uninspired, I couldn't let the "weekly instalments" phase of the project gather dust without a final post or two. And yes, there will be a non-random visit to the swan section of a certain Novelli cookbook in due course. But first there's the small matter of how best to sum up and commemorate twelve months - fifty-two weeks! - of self-imposed kitchen nonsense.

I suggest we approach it category by category, in the vein of an awards ceremony. The "Swannies", if you will.

Most popular post
The Random Kitchen was never created with popularity in mind - the next Zoella I ain't - but it's been interesting to track the hits for each post and see what's captured people's imagination (and/or presumably turned up in the odd Google search result).

Third place is basically shared by the Seafood Vol-au-Vent that wasn't, Week 30's sinful Paneer Makhani and - for some reason - Jan Arkless's necessarily basic Roast Pork recipe. Some way ahead of them in second place is the Cappuccino and Walnut Cake I ended up sharing among my fellow parkrunners. But our clear winner, perhaps inevitably, is my rant about Everyday Novelli and Jean-Christophe's peculiar mussel/porridge obsession.

People seem to enjoy seeing me angry, basically.

Don't get me started...

Least popular post
Conversely, there were some weeks where even I couldn't really be bothered, and that was often reflected in reader numbers, especially when the recipe name wasn't enticing enough to pull people in. Funnily enough, the heroic Braised Beef stew from Week 39 didn't get much love - I suppose it was always going to be boringly uneventful - but the wooden spoon clearly goes to the perfectly fine but fundamentally uninspiring Cauliflower Cheese and co. from Week 12. Can't say I blame you all, really.

Best new kit
I've always prided myself on having a reasonably well-equipped kitchen, so the one thing I didn't expect from this project was that I'd need to buy so much new bakeware, so many new gadgets and all manner of other stuff just to be able to accurately reproduce the recipes in the first place. If I'd known, I'd have proposed to Sam in late 2015 purely so we could do a John Lewis gift list and get it all for free.

Still, the kitchen stockists of Lewisham have benefited financially from the Random Kitchen project and I've picked up some good stuff along the way, so I'm not complaining. It's about time I owned a proper heavy casserole dish, after all, and it's testament to my low-level baking skills that I hadn't wanted or needed an electric hand mixer until now - but the Swannie has to go to the ridiculous bundt pan that I probably ought to have bought sooner, but which finally took pride of place in my home just in time for me to summon up the ghost of the 1980s.

Ominous

Most pointless technique
That'd be James Martin getting me to poach haddock in a roasting tin precariously balanced on top of a hob flame. One of the year's few real excursions into Proper Food, the resulting dish was very tasty (yay!) and didn't poison Sam's mum (double yay!), but cooking the fish that way took bloody ages, and what did it really add to proceedings?

Special mention to The Silver Spoon for its inventive application of risotto cooking techniques to spare ribs, of all things.

Most overused condiment
Salt, ffs. I didn't realise how sensitive I was to salt - or at least how relatively low-salt my diet must be - until I kept encountering chefs using the stuff left, right and centre. And not only Madhur Jaffrey, though lord knows she was consistently the worst offender.

Most overused GIF

Our favourite recipes
Having made him suffer for 52 long weeks, I had to let Sam have his say on the next two categories. For the first one, we each picked our five favourites from the year as a whole, and there wasn't actually all that much overlap.

That's partly because I ended up choosing some less spectacular concoctions that I know I'll return to regularly - the Goan-style dal curry from Week 14 and the recent semolina "cake" in all its gaudy glory - and neither of those were ever likely to knock his socks off. I also went for the excellent Chinese-style bacon "salad" from early in the project, which I'm looking forward to making for friends sometime.

Meanwhile, Sam picked out the aforementioned creamy paneer curry, the flavour-packed seafood vol-au-vent that wasn't actually a vol-au-vent (although the seafood was seafood), and the leek and ham galette that I had a strop at for being far too big for any normal person's freezer.

We did agree on two favourites, though - the amazing slow-cooked beef stew from Week 39 and the ridiculously decadent take on sausage, onion gravy and mash from Week 44.

Amber knows

Basically what we're saying is the Random Kitchen was good when it forced us to eat large quantities of meat-heavy comfort food. That figures. 

Our least favourite recipes
Ainsley's tarte tatin was just some chutney on a measly shortbread base, Anjum Anand's aubergine dish went toe-curlingly, yoghurt-curdlingly wrong, and Barbara bloody Kafka insulted everyone's intelligence with the now-legendary Vegetables For One.

Despite strong competition like this, however, picking the very worst of the year involved three simple steps. I turned to Sam; I said "it's the Spiced Cucumber, isn't it?"; he replied "God, obviously, yes."

I still have nightmares, swear down.

*sigh*

Most bare-faced lie
When I shared this blog on my football forum, one friend commented that he's rarely owned a cookbook that he's got more than 3-4 regular recipes from - and although this year-long process of random selection has ably demonstrated that most recipes are at least fundamentally okay, I suspect that ratio will continue to hold true for me in terms of what I'm inspired to return to and make again.

Part of the problem is that cookbook authors are freaking lazy. There's so much padding in most books (or at least most of the books I own), with countless variations on a theme of "put stuff in a dish topped with flaky pastry and call it a pie", for example - not to mention lots of so-called "recipes" that even my friends started to pick holes in:

Even when a randomly selected recipe has been complex enough to actually merit the name, it often ends up being ridiculous in other ways. I'm reminded of Nigella's insistence that a vat of wine will suffice in a stew instead of stock or water, or Barbara Kafka's microwave take on apple sauce that somehow seemed to complicate rather than simplify proceedings.

But for sheer meanness of spirit, I'm going to award the final Swannie to the revered Delia Smith, whose "Avocados with Prawns 2 Ways" wanted me to prepare the titular avocados and prawns not two ways, but either one way or the other.

Huh.

I think Wilfred says it best:

Fifty-two-word verdict
One of the great pleasures of the Random Kitchen project has been finding a single word with which to conclude each post, a term that neatly encapsulates that week's cooking and eating experience. Logically, then, as we draw to the end of this review of the year, revisiting my one-word verdicts should provide an accurate insight into how I perceived the Random Kitchen experience as a whole.

Being an awful middle-class wanker, I have chosen to express this insight... in haiku form.

*clears throat*

Hearty. Tangy. Tart. Acceptable. Pointless. Fine. Moreish. Nobbly. Cheese. Retro. Tangible. Wholesome. Smashing. Summery. Polarising. Paj. Sloppylicious. Fun! Vegetastic. Everyday. MANLY. Stressful. Hic! 'Arriba'. "Healthy". Perfunctory. Bittersweet. Satisfactory.

Rich. Bemusing. Ribbed. Rewarding. Superfluous. Sloppy. Vegetables...? Tingly. (Used that twice.) Satisfying. (Also twice.) Adequate. (Ditto.) Lazy. Substantial. Holey. Celebratory. Apocalyptic. Tortuous. Mundane. Final one-word verdict, then: "Overwhelming"? YES.

*bows deeply*

(There were two image-based verdicts too, but I couldn't decide how many syllables they ought to count for. Sorry, Liz.)

Shut up, Martin
All told, I wrote a lot of words last year. Nearly 52,000, appropriately enough for a 52-week project - and that's not including photo captions, which were often the most fun part, quite frankly. We're approaching book-length territory with that figure, I suppose - albeit a weird book that nobody in their right mind would actually want to buy. Still, though: I wrote a short book in 2016! #IsWriting! #NaNoWriMo! #OrSomething!

Anyway, because a haiku wasn't enough wankery already, I thought I'd conclude this post(-mortem) by generating a wordcloud from the entire sprawling project in order to see if we can identify any overarching themes.

Hm. "Cheese" aside, not really.

Still, I suppose it's quite pretty, if fundamentally useless. And I find it hard to imagine a more suitable epitaph for the Random Kitchen than that.

Thank you so much for reading it all. It's been a blast. May I propose one final toast to the swans?

Erm

One-word verdict: Exhausted.

Week 52: Farmhouse Supper

The book: How To Boil An Egg (Jan Arkless)

The recipe: p102, "Farmhouse Supper"

And so... the end is near...

I can't quite believe it, but here we are. It's very nearly the end of 2016, and this post marks the fifty-second time I've used an online random number generator to pick a recipe from my underused cookbooks for me to make and subsequently blog about. A final summary post or two will follow, of course - but for now let's just give ourselves a hearty pat on the back for getting this far.

And while random.org doesn't always exhibit a sense of occasion (still no meringue swans, folks!), it does seem rather apt that we're ending this project where we began it, namely with Jan Arkless and her timeless guide to solo student cuisine. Even though this inevitably means a fairly pedestrian bit of cuisine for me to wax lyrical about.

Underwhelming though this conclusion to proceedings may be, the chosen recipe this week, "Farmhouse Supper", still feels like something of a bullet-dodge considering what other delights haunt the pages of How To Boil An Egg, from "Quick Kidney Special" and "Pork In A Packet" to, well, this:

I'm not sure whether to be more offended by the concept of "Potato Bolognese" or the concept of people who don't like pasta...

Whereas this final dose of randomness appears to be a reasonably tame weeknight concoction that - in addition to actually involving the titular eggs (albeit not boiled) - might actually require a quantum of skill and result in a hint of flavour. That'd certainly be a step forward for Jan.

Not that one

The prep: With How To Boil An Egg being aimed at students cooking for themselves on a budget, the first thing to do is double the quantities of everything so that it actually feeds both of us.

Jan describes this dish as a "tasty way of using up cooked potato", so the next thing is to cook some potatoes ("3-4" each - I go for 4, natch) then pretend they're leftovers. I also buy some smoked back bacon ("1-2 rashers" each - I go for 2, natch), a green pepper, and some eggs ("1-2" each - I go for 2, natch).

Other than that, it's all stuff I have in the house, as I suppose one might reasonably expect from this tome. Being outfoxed by a student cookbook would be an ignominious end to the random year and no mistake.

The making: Right from the start there are two things I like about this recipe (insofar as something so straightforward can even be called a recipe). Firstly, it lets you cook things in stages so only one pan and one dish are required - student kitchen-friendly, see? And secondly, the method starts with all the peeling and chopping instead of burying it away in the ingredients list in order to give the impression that things are a lot simpler than they actually are. Good on you, Jan.

I start, then, by slicing and dicing the potatoes, peeling and chopping the onion, de-rinding and dicing the bacon, and coring and chopping the pepper. And that's just the first two-line paragraph.

Ready and waiting

Oil is heated in a decent-sized frying pan and the bacon is fried gently for a few minutes before being removed to a saucer. I then fry the onion and pepper in the oil and bacon fat until they're starting to soften...

Superfluous illustration

...before adding the potato and sautéing (not that Jan calls it that, because that'd be too complex) until browned. The contents of the pan are then combined with the bacon and transferred to an ovenproof dish.

Next, a knob of butter is melted in the same pan and the eggs are fried. I make sure they're barely set before taking them off the heat, since I know the next step is to carefully slide them on top of the vegetables in the dish. Grated cheese is sprinkled on top - I go for Red Leicester solely because it's what we happen to have in the fridge, although it also adds a nice touch of colour - and the whole thing goes under a hot grill for a few minutes until the cheese is bubbly and welcoming.

I may have gone past "bubbly" to "slightly burny". Typical student.

And there we have it. Fifty-two weeks of random cookery, and the very last dish ends up being simplicity itself. Despite my earlier care, the eggs still end up more set than I'd like, but otherwise everything is as it should be. It's essentially a variation on bubble and squeak, a breakfast hash but served in the evening. And why not? It's about as much "cooking" as I ever managed in four years of university.

The eating: For some time now I've been concerned about, well, running out of words to describe food. Not that the Random Kitchen project has become a chore per se, but there's only so many times you can use phrases like "mouthfeel" or "pleasing texture" or "stuff swimming in other stuff" before it starts to get a bit samey.

So all I'm going to say about this is it tastes exactly as you'd expect it to.

Mm, farmhouse-y

It's deeply unambitious, as we've come to expect from Jan, but I suppose the teenagers of 1986 had less experience of exotic concepts like seasoning. If nothing else, nowadays you'd surely chuck in some cubed chorizo or another shop-bought ready ingredient to brighten things up a bit.

But honestly, for all it's necessarily straightforward, I'd have been happy enough to come up with something like this even as a late-90s student. It looks decent and feels substantial, there's even some actual nutrition hidden away in there, and you wouldn't especially need the grilling phase as the cheese melts into the whole thing anyway, so it's essentially an easy one-pan dinner. And even my more developed 38-year-old palate welcomes this as a basic interlude between the rich excesses of Christmas and NYE.

So while I'm not denying it's a bit of a downer on which to conclude The Random Kitchen in some respects, I'm happy enough. This project has always been about going with the flow and taking things as they come, after all - such is chance.

And hey, worse things have happened in 2016 than a "Farmhouse Supper".

Now that's what I call a happy ending.

One-word verdict: Mundane.

Supplementary words of reassurance: Regardless of whether I continue The Random Kitchen next year or not (and if I do, lord knows it won't be on a weekly basis - I am greatly looking forward to being allowed to cook what I want again!), I couldn't possibly allow this blog to peter out without a final visit to the pages of Everyday Novelli for a non-random encounter with some meringue birdlife. It will happen. Of course it will. Just give me a few days to work up the courage...

Week 51: Savoury Semolina Cake

The book: Indian Food Made Easy (Anjum Anand)

The recipe: p25, "Savoury Semolina Cake"

I'm going to be honest, "Savoury Semolina Cake" is not a collection of words I expected to encounter in a Random Kitchen context (though I probably should have, considering this is a project that's given us "Spiced Cucumber" and "Vegetables For One"). And yet I'm instantly sold on the concept.

I mean, just look at it. What do you mean you can't? Being from a BBC series and all, the recipe is right here. And it looks very much like My Kind Of Thing - more bread than cake really (and I've been wanting bread to come up again for a while), attractive to look at yet still faintly ludicrous in the execution. I absolutely approve.

Plus it's two days to Christmas when I spin the random wheel and there's going to be no shortage of rich and, well, very English food in the week ahead, so why not try something authentically Indian? At least I assume it's authentic; the introduction in the book likens it to something called handvo, but that comparison is absent in the online version of the recipe. And in fact various sites suggest that handvo contains lentils and/or paneer and/or, at the very least, appears to be something similar but fundamentally different. So perhaps this isn't all that authentic after all - there is a "purists beware" warning attached, I suppose. Hm. Oh well, I'm sufficiently culturally ignorant to proceed regardless. Let's loaf!

The prep: I have an ideally sized tin for this particular bit of baking (thank you, Jane Asher and Poundland), which comes as something of a relief since I've spent all week battling with various recipes for gluten-free Christmas cookies, so any way in which Anjum can live up to her claim and actually make things easy is extremely welcome at this stage.

To my surprise, there's also very little I need to buy in. The titular semolina is missing from my cupboards, of course - I'm not a school dinnerlady in the 1980s, so why would I need that particular retro horror in my life? (Still, it could be worse: it could be frogspawn tapioca.)

I also pick up some fresh green beans even though frozen would be fine (the decadence!) and some proper Greek yoghurt with actual fat in it, since I'm keen to avoid a repeat of the curdling episode that dogged Anjum's first appearance in this blog.

The making: You can see the recipe for yourself, as noted above, but I'll summarise the steps anyway. To begin, onion is chopped, carrot is peeled and grated, green beans are "roughly broken up" (I do love a vague instruction), and petits pois are allowed to defrost slightly. These vegetables are then combined with the semolina, yoghurt, ginger, chopped chillies, chilli powder, turmeric and salt to form a fairly thick batter.

So far so easy.

A healthy dose of vegetable oil is then heated and some mustard and cumin seeds are briefly fried until fragrant and a-popping. The seeds and oil are stirred through the batter, followed by the bicarbonate of soda, and... oh. That's all! It's ready to go into the tin and, from there, into the oven.

Does look a bit like vomit though

Wait wait, I almost forgot something. The online version of the recipe (which I'm working from in writing this post at the in-laws' over Christmas) lists sesame seeds in the ingredients but doesn't expressly tell the reader what to do with them, implying that they should be toasted along with the other seeds. Yet the book version definitely tells me to scatter them over the contents of the tin before it goes into the oven for 35-40 minutes. I'm not sure why Anjum changed her mind or what version is supposed to be the definitive one, but it certainly comes out looking nice(r) with the sesame seeds atop the "cake":

Cracking loaf, Gromit

And just look at those slices. Colourful to the point of ridiculous - who wouldn't want to sink their teeth into something so riotously vivid?

"Green-studded radioactive orange" is my favourite colour of food

I am entirely serious here, by the way. That is absolutely the kind of thing I always want to be eating. Heck, if anything, it looks nicer and moister than the version from the TV show, which seems a bit flat and sad by comparison. Win!

The eating: This basically goes exactly as I predict: Sam is ambivalent whereas I really quite like it. It's not spectacular - how could it be with those simple ingredients? - but its humble slices are home to a pleasing blend of vegetable crunch, soggy semolina (soggy semolina) and a slow-building rustic spiciness. All in return for minimal difficulty and minimal outlay - "Indian Food Made Easy" indeed.

It's still hard to know exactly what it's for, admittedly. I think the key, from an ignorant western perspective, is to look past the c-word of the title and treat this as something closer to a bread. Not the kind of bread you'd butter and use in a sandwich, obviously - but a couple of slices are enough for a decent lunch option or, frankly, a quick and moderately healthy breakfast jolt to the tastebuds. Has to be better than another turkey sandwich, right?

Added to which, less the two slices we taste-tested, it's even a perfect fit for our tupperware.

OCD-tastic!

Definitely a success, then. I may not be wasting any of it on Sam, but I will absolutely be making this again in 2017 and beyond.

One-word verdict: Fun!

Week 50: Chowder with Asian Flavours

The book: Nigella Express

The recipe: p164, "Chowder with Asian Flavours"

This recipe is a disappointment. That's not a spoiler - as if I'd give the game away this early in proceedings - but come on. Nigella is the kind of person who peppers her food writing with words like "rebarbative" and "subfusc", yet here we're expected to be satisfied with "Asian Flavours"? I know I was criticising Ainsley for his twee recipe names just last week, but if Nigella can't deliver a bit of casual pretentiousness, qui le peut?

Despite this, I'm looking forward to chowing down on Nigella's chowder. (Oh, behave.) As often, her introductory words contain a lot of provisos and excuses - apparently true foodies would have legitimate issues with her omission of a roux and, god forbid, the use of coconut milk instead of milk milk - but considering I'm ignorant enough that my only available Mallett's Mallet answer for "chowder" would be "clam", I'm more than willing to be carried along by this Lawsonian wave of culinary sacrilege.

Plus it's midweek and we've just got back from holiday via a traumatic experience involving buses, December weather and Croydon, so a warming and easy dinner - sorry Nigella, not a supper - ought to hit the spot nicely.

The prep: Just when I thought I might get away with it, the Random Kitchen requires me to buy yet another jar of spices I'll end up using once or twice then forgetting about at the back of the cupboard.

Overkill

Yes, it's mace, a word I associate more with self-defence sprays than any particular kind of cuisine, but apparently it's required here, as are lots of vegetables - potatoes, leeks, baby corn and tinned sweetcorn, for a start, many of which might have been in our veg box delivery if I hadn't cancelled it this week (d'oh). The stars of this particular chowder are fish (Nigella wants fresh cod, but it's a soup, for god's sake - generic frozen white stuff will do) and prawns (where frozen is fine, apparently).

There are a few standard ingredients here - coconut milk is already in the cupboard, red chillies are already in the freezer - but otherwise there's quite a lot to buy in (and I haven't even got to the coriander yet). I suppose that's in keeping with the bright, fresh and hopefully quick nature of this particular flavour combo, so I can take a bit of a hit in the wallet department.

The making: There's lots of peeling and chopping buried away in the ingredient list to make the method look more straightforward. Sneaky sneaky.

Anyway, I start by bringing some chicken stock ("not instant") to the boil in a medium-sized pan, before chucking in some chopped potatoes, leeks and baby corn and cooking them for ten minutes along with a couple of bay leaves and a generous teaspoon of ground mace.

Stock photo

Next up, a tin of coconut milk is added, along with 600g of cubed "cod" fillets and a generous glug or ten of lime juice. This concoction is brought back to the boil and simmered for a minute until the fish is obviously starting to cook a bit.

A bag of frozen prawns and a drained can of sweetcorn are added, and back to the boil it all comes once again - for an "express" recipe, this one does seem to require a lot of standing around waiting for things to start bubbling - before we're ready to season and serve. Suffice it to say that this involves two of my favourite ingredients:

Yay

And the chowder is duly bowled up, garnished, and sent tablewards. Since it seems quite substantial in its own right, I even manage to refrain from serving it with a hunk of white bread. Suppressing one's inherent northernness is tougher than it may appear.

The eating: To my surprise, the portion sizes here really are substantial, actually. For once, "Serves 4" means what it says!

It's a decent enough eating experience, with the veggies retaining their bite, the coconut milk adding a hint of creamy decadence, and the coriander/chilli delivering the requisite freshness. Of course, there are complaints too. (There are always complaints.)

Firstly, the texture. I get that a chowder is always going to be a bit "stuff swimming in liquid" (and it's not like Nigella doesn't have history on that front), but this seems a bit more watery than it needs to be, which detracts from the potential luxuriousness of the dish somewhat - or at least from its visual impact, which isn't altogether unimportant.

Glub

And secondly, the seasoning. The chowder is overly salty, but that's fine - it comes with the territory with fish dishes, and it's easily tweaked next time round. What's less excusable is the mace. I don't get it and I don't get what it's doing here. All it seems to add to proceedings is a slightly, well, dirty taste and a generic numbness of the tongue, both of which could surely have been better achieved with more chilli and/or conventional seasoning. As it stands, there's an overwhelming tingly mace-ness to the whole thing that rather overshadows the subtlety of the fish and prawn flavours. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find something do to with the rest of the jar.

The dish as a whole isn't at all bad, though. It introduces some much-needed bright and striking flavours to the darkness of winter solstice week, and while the cooking time and the (not-so-)hidden instructions mean it's an awful lot less "express" than Nigella would like it to be, it's certainly not a complicated or difficult meal to prepare. Coconut milk aside, it's even quite healthy, yet it still manages to feel like a bit of a treat.

Definitely happy to try this again some time, in other words. Just, y'know, I might go easy on the mace.

One-word verdict: Tingly.

Week 49: Cheese 'n' Onion Tarte Tatin

The book: Ainsley Harriott's Meals In Minutes

The recipe: p45, "Cheese 'n' Onion Tarte Tatin"

You're on the internet, so there's every chance you're familiar with this image:

It's clumsily executed, but you know what it's getting at - a thoroughly decent human being he may be, but Ainsley is an easy figure of fun, and he does himself no favours with recipe titles like "Cheese 'n' Onion Tarte Tatin". I mean, seriously. What's so wrong with the word "and"? What degree of jollity and merriment is actually injected into proceedings through the use of that abbreviation? It's a tarte tatin, not a children's birthday party, so stop making balloon animals and let me start cooking for fuck's sake.

You may think I seem a little grouchy, but my mood is immediately lifted when I inspect this week's recipe in greater detail - for there it is, right in front of my eyes:

Oh glorious, glorious fate.

Anyway, all frivolity aside, this sounds like my kind of dish (who doesn't like a mouthful of tart?) and I could use something relatively quick and easy on this particular weekday evening. Besides, with the Random Kitchen having forced me to make all kinds of "pies" that are little more than a collection of stuff in a casserole dish with a leaf of flaky pastry on top, it'll be nice to conjure up something with an actual base for once. Alors: on y blooming well va!

The prep: Being a speedy recipe, we're in Jus-Rol territory as far as the shortcrust pastry goes, which is fine by me - I'm sure I'll try making my own one day, but not right now. Onion-wise, the recipe calls for three large red ones, which I deem to be roughly equivalent to the four medium-sized ones the local Asda is willing to surrender up to me.

The cheese we normally have in the house is of the low-fat variety, but I figure the bonding properties of regular Cathedral City might come in handy for this particular dish. Meanwhile, the suggestion of a "mixed salad, to serve" is neatly covered by this week's veg box delivery, so that's useful.

There's also the small matter of dark muscovado sugar...

Cake tin, sugar, cheese. Inget konstigt alls.

...which is a minor extravagance just for the two tablespoons I need here, but it's nearly Christmas biscuit season, so I suspect I can find a use for the rest.

The making: Butter and oil are combined and heated in a frying pan, then the onions - already thinly sliced - are cooked until softened. This being a quick meal, Ainsley wants me to do this for a mere 5-8 minutes before proceeding. I've got some time in hand and I know from recent experience that onions only benefit from a bit of the slow and gentle treatment, so I probably give it closer to 20 minutes before adding in the sugar and some balsamic vinegar and cooking the mixture for a wee while longer until it's nicely caramelised.

Getting a distinct sense of déjà oignée here

This suspiciously gravy-base-like mixture is spooned into the bottom of a cake tin, then most of the cheese is sprinkled on top. Next, I roll out the pastry into a circle slightly larger than the circumference of the tin, then press it over the filling and tuck down the sides lightly but assertively. I expect this to be awkward, but it all goes well, leaving me to prick with a fork to my heart's content.

Comprehensively pricked

That done, the tin goes into the oven for 25 minutes, then comes out to sit on the side briefly before the real fun begins: inverting it and turning it out onto a serving plate. This can only go smoothly.

And yet, to my shock, it kind of does. There is definitely now a savoury tarte tatin on a plate on the side in my kitchen, with only minimal slop and spillage around the sides. That, in itself, is a good thing, and I quickly sprinkle over the rest of the cheese to finish off the recipe before anything goes wrong.

What's less good is my dawning realisation that - having naïvely imagined this as an easy dinner option - there really is nowhere near enough food here. I mean, it's quite calorific what with being pastry and cheese and all, but it's not especially substantial. And pairing it with a salad is hardly going to help matters. All told, dinner might be a bit on the light side tonight.

"Serves four", the recipe claims. Four what - dormice?

Prick with a fork...

This sense of impending dread notwithstanding, there's little else for it but to plate up and see what happens. So that's what I do:

Sam: "It looks like chocolate pizza."

The eating: Hm. Substantial or not, I'm expecting this tarte to be tasty and a little bit naughty, yet somehow it's neither of those things.

For one thing, the trouble with the title's jocular focus on "cheese 'n' onion" is that you imagine the filling will have a flavour to match. I mean, I'm not expecting a grab bag of Walkers crisps or anything, but still - there should be far more cheese and far less onion going on here. "Onion 'n' onion" would have been closer to the mark. Or just, y'know, "caramelised onions on a shortcrust pizza base", because that's all this really is.

It's all very basic, basically.

It disappears quickly, and not just because there's not much of it - it is perfectly okay - but even in its natural habitat as part of a lunch buffet involving chicken legs and pasta salad (say), this still wouldn't be close to the star of the show. More pressingly, I have definitely bollocksed up the "providing a filling dinner" part of my househusbandly duties this evening.

"There's more salad...?" I venture when we're done. This earns me A Look.

There's only one thing for it.

Second dinner

Sorry, Sam - I guess that's what happens when your boyfriend is a prick with a random cookery project. 

One-word verdict: Bemusing.