Week 47: Sichuan Orange Beef

The book: Chinese Food Made Easy (Ching-He Huang)

The recipe: p. 42, "Sichuan Orange Beef"

Age and achievement are a funny thing. While I'm still reeling from my own 38th birthday, Wikipedia informs me that Ching-He Huang was born exactly nine days earlier than me in that fine autumn of 1978. And sure, she may have "become the face of Chinese cookery internationally through her TV shows, books, tableware range and involvement in many high-profile campaigns and causes" - but does she have a blog in which she uses a random number generator for the purposes of wilful culinary self-harm? I think not.

If my memory (OK, my search function) serves me right, we haven't delved into the pages of this book since way back in Week 6, where it delivered a punchy lunchtime treat. This time round we're in main course territory, and Ching introduces her recipe with evocative talk of "dried tangerine peel and the citrusy-numbing hot Sichuan peppercorns" and the delicious flavour they bring to Sichuan cooking. Sounds pretty promising - let's see how it equates to the plate, shall we?

The prep: I'm initially concerned, as the ingredient list suggests that a trip to the local Chinese supermarket might be required - and on the day in question, the local Chinese supermarket is still firmly on the wrong side of this:

Oops.

To my surprise, however, there's nothing that can't be obtained at Lewisham Sainsbury's, including shiitake mushrooms and the "optional" (ahahaha) jasmine rice - though it probably helps that I've still got Shaohsing rice wine in the cupboard from those Week 6 adventures.

Otherwise all I need to do is select my preferred interpretation of the recipe's "frying steak or fillet steak". Fillet seems a bit of an extravagance for a meal like this, plus the previous day's "dinner" was an endless supply of Virgin East Coast sandwiches, muffins, biscuits, muffins, crisps and muffins, so something more substantial seems advisable. As such - and since, dear reader, I like big butts and I cannot lie - I settle on a couple of rump steaks, thin enough to absorb the flavours and allow for quick cooking but thick enough to satisfy.

The making: Being a BBC tie-in, the recipe is available right here, although there are slight differences in terms of both ingredients (white pepper here, black pepper in the book) and method. Since the Random Kitchen is all about my underused cookbooks, I'm sticking with what it says on the printed page, natch.

I start by mixing the rice wine with some light soy sauce, runny honey, orange juice (I'm assuming smooth not bitty) and freshly ground pepper, before adding the beef and leaving it to marinate for what ends up being about 20 minutes.

An absorbing sight

In the meantime, I cook the jasmine rice, dish it up and leave it in the oven on a plate-warming temperature - the recipe will later require me to cover the cooked steaks to keep them warm while finishing off the other ingredients, but I know from bitter experience that cold plates and hot steaks are a disappointing combination, so this seems a more promising approach. (Plus the rice is already sticky by definition, so a few minutes at 100-ish degrees will hardly change much.)

That done, a frying pan is heated until highly hot. I add oil followed by my substantial rump, which I've halved for ease of handling. The meat is cooked as preferred - a couple of minutes on either side in this case, for a medium-rare finish that'll be nicely medium by the time it's been kept warm for a bit.

#gaysteak #instarump #speedomeat

The remaining marinade is added for the last few seconds, bubbling up before reducing down, then I plate up the beef with the rice and pop it back into the warm oven.

The final stage is to cook the shiitake mushrooms in the same pan, so that they soak up all the remaining juices from the marinade. Once the mushrooms are softened, I throw in the "garnish" for a couple of seconds too, since I think it could benefit from absorbing some of the same flavours. The garnish in question is a peeled and segmented orange - the photo in the book suggests that the segments themselves should also be peeled, which I file firmly under "life's too short" - and a sliced spring onion (optional, but duh).

This is then assembled along with the steak and rice to produce a dish that looks uncannily like a chunk of beef smothered by various Asian and not-so-Asian toppings.

Colourful though

The eating: Broadly positive noises all round, though Sam is happier than I am. The impact of the honey/orange marinade is a bit sickly for my taste, failing to really cut through the flavour of the meat, but we're agreed that the mushrooms and spring onions work nicely (and that the orange segments are, well, a bit odd). For the most part, though, the dish seems to work mainly because it's a decent cut of meat cooked just right, and not because of anything Ching's recipe has added to proceedings.

This is when I realise what's missing. The intro to the recipe waxes lyrical about the tang of orange peel and the spice of peppercorns, so why aren't they used here? Anything along those lines - heck, even just some garlic or chilli - would offset the sweetness and give the dish a far more satisfactory kick. I'm not asking for it to be spicy per se, merely something other than only sweet. As it stands, though, it's just a fairly bland and uneventful steak and rice dish with some nice mushrooms on top.

Which is fine in itself - and it's a quick and easy dinner that certainly suits the "Made Easy" claim of the book's title - but I was expecting something a little more interesting after Week 6's taste explosion. I'd say "maybe next time", but time is something this project is rapidly running out of...

One-word verdict: Perfunctory.

Week 46: Avocados with Prawns 2 Ways

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

The recipe: p. 88, "Avocados with Prawns 2 Ways"

"There are," Delia says in the introduction to this so-called recipe, "some quite ordinary yet lovely things that end up being overlooked because they are not fashionable." And if you think she's only talking about avocado and prawns, you're a less cynical reader than me.

To date, two themes have emerged from our encounters with Delia's controversial cookbook of cheatery: revivals of old-fashioned recipes, and shortcuts that don't actually save a great deal of time while certainly costing a great deal of money. So I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that this week's random.org selection fits the bill perfectly on both counts.

Never mind revivals, this dish really is more of a throwback to 1970s dinner parties, or perhaps a family meal at a Berni Inn (which I never actually experienced myself - we were more of a Harvester clan). I'm quite happy to let it scratch a lunchtime itch in this futuristic and frankly depressing year we call 2016, though - so let's see what tasty treats and pointless cheats Delia has in store for us this time.

And hey - it could always be worse.

The prep: The first problem with this recipe - and I really don't mean to be such a grouch, but it's amazing how many problems there are with Random Kitchen recipes - lies in the phrase "2 Ways". To my mind, that implies a plate featuring two different types of avocado/prawn concoction. As far as Delia's concerned, however, it means preparing the avocado and prawns either one way or the other.

Well, absolutely fuck that shit. I want to try both variants, so I double the quantities of everything on the ingredient list - that's avocados, limes, lettuce and the cheat de résistance, namely shop-bought prawn cocktail ("we've made it with Tesco Finest but any similar one is fine"). If you're starting to get the impression that this is going to be yet another "just chop and assemble some stuff" kind of recipe, you'd be right...

The recipe also calls for buttered slices of "traditional Irish wheaten loaf", which I choose to interpret as "whatever nice fresh bread I can actually get at the Lewisham Centre on a Sunday" (some vaguely sourdough-y seeded thing from M&S that turns out to be really, really good).

The making: "Making", hahahaha. Well, okay, there is some work involved. First, I have to empty the prawn cocktail into a bowl and add seasoning, a good pinch of cayenne pepper, some lime juice and some tomato ketchup (specifically organic, because it's important that tomatoes are raised in an environment where they can roam freely). Two points here: firstly, that's clearly going to make the whole thing far too liquidy for its intended purpose; and secondly, if you're going to make me add several ingredients to it anyway, why not just get me to make the prawn cocktail from scratch? IT'S NOT HARD.

Anyway, prawns duly sauced up, the first of the "2 Ways" turns out to be simply piling the mixture "into the halved avocado". The idea seems to be to scoop it into the hollow left by removing the stone, but that actually isn't a great deal of space for this quantity of prawn cocktail, so - as predicted - both prawns and sauce end up overflowing and spilling down the sides of the avocado halves. Good start.

The second of the "2 Ways" is slightly more involved. Lettuce is shredded and piled in the bottom of a glass (yes! A glass! How Come Dine With Me is that?). The contents of the second avocado are scooped out and cubed this time, then piled atop the lettuce, before the prawn cocktail mixture is piled on top of that. It's multi-layered-starter-tastic!

I mean, seriously

Both "Ways" are finished with a further sprinkling of cayenne, before being served with lime quarters to squeeze and a couple of slices of the buttered bread. I might have let the diner do the buttering to taste, but Delia's the boss, and in the 1970s (and at Maggie's caff in Lewisham in 2016, for that matter) tea comes with milk and bread comes already buttered.

And there we have it. Messy prawn cocktail in not one but two difficult-to-eat-while-not-actually-that-visually-impressive forms. Hurrah!

The eating: Let's get one thing out of the way - this is really nice. Of course it is! It's avocados, prawn cocktail and gnarly bread, three of life's better foodstuffs.

IT'S JUST SO POINTLESS.

Seriously though. Take shop-bought prawn cocktail - which isn't exactly cheap - and turn it into a sloppy mess that leads to presentation hiccups like the above, then serve it in arcane ways, only one of which we're apparently allowed to enjoy at the same time anyway? That isn't "cheating" at cooking, it's corrupting the meaning of cooking while simultaneously introducing random handicaps for no apparent reason.

And yet, and yet... this is so close to making sense. The glass-based variant, while kind of ludicrous, is actually a fairly easy way of making a cute-looking (if retro) starter or lunch, and even the other approach would work fine if you scooped out the avocado then reassembled its contents, diced, with the avocado shell as a receptacle and a layer of prawn cocktail on top. Still very 70s and all - just not, you know, immediately glooping its way down the sides because that's how gravity and viscosity work, Delia.

Would revisit, v. nice lunch, and yet somehow still: gaaaah.

One-word verdict: Tortuous.

Week 45: Aubergine Hummus

The book: Everyday Novelli

The recipe: p178, "Aubergine Hummus"

Dear readers: it's finally happened.

SOUND THE NOVELLI KLAXON!

And place your swans on high alert

It's the book that launched a thousand quips, not to mention inspiring what remains the most-read post of the Random Kitchen project to date. Forty-five long weeks we've waited for the random finger of fate to finally point its way. And now - now, at last, my friends - the moment has arrived.

While the likelihood of me having to lovingly feed a tub of mussels or hand-craft some sugary swan necks is statistically low, the possibility is very firmly on the table this week and the sense of peril is palpable. Which is why it's both a relief and a disappointment when random.org's choice ends up being fairly mundane. Heck, not only does the method involve a mere seven steps (practically a ready meal by Novelli standards), but aubergine hummus sounds like something I might actively want to eat. What is this sorcery?

I can only hope there are some arcane cooking techniques involved. Maybe I'll have to hand-rear a school of baby chickpeas.

Or a herd of lemons

The prep: For a relatively simple dip, the ingredients list is reassuringly lengthy (don't ever change, Jean-Christophe). In terms of herbs alone, we're talking fresh basil, coriander and thyme, which would seem to promise a bright and tasty end result. I'm a little puzzled by the need for "Cajun spices" as that doesn't seem especially Middle Eastern, but Sharwoods do a handy mix that shouldn't go to waste (potato wedges, baby!) so I don't resent having to shell out for it.

The only sticking point is the tahini. A mandatory feature of any hummus, the thick sesame seed paste is thin on the ground in Lewisham on this particular Sunday. The designated shelf at Sainsbury's is desolate and empty, and while you'd think one of the local Turkish supermarkets might come to my rescue, since they stock pretty much everything else in existence, I can't seem to find it and the staff are way too loudly busy for me to want to risk disturbing them.

On a hunch, I decide to pull out my phone and google to see what's actually in tahini... and, erm, turns out it really is just basically sesame seeds (toasting optional if preferable) and a splash of oil (even that's optional). I reckon I ought to be able to replicate that.

I'm a seedgrinder. In my sleep I grind my seeds

And so I can. The result isn't quite as smooth as shop-bought tahini, which may be because my blade isn't sharp enough or because I don't have the patience to add a few minutes to the blending time like I probably ought to, but it'll do for the job at hand.

The making: The oven is pre-heated. Two aubergines are cut in half - lengthways, though technically it doesn't specify - and laid out on baking sheets before being sprinkled with a diced garlic clove, a tablespoon of caster sugar and a teaspoon of the Cajun spices. Sprigs of the thyme are then laid on top before liberal quantities of olive oil are applied.

Oiled up and ready for action

The prepped aubergines are then covered with foil and baked in the oven "for 20-25 minutes, or until soft". I immediately identify two problems with this instruction: firstly, I always find aubergines take longer to cook than recipes think; and secondly, I always find foil-covered things take longer to cook than recipes think. True to form, it's probably closer to double that time (including a period of baking uncovered) before the aubergines are approaching the kind of scoopable softness the recipe demands. (Fuck's actual sake.)

Once the aubergines are removed from the oven and allowed to cool to a less finger-endangering temperature, the flesh is scooped out and blitzed in a food processor until smooth. Next, most of the remaining ingredients are added - that's 200g of cooked and drained chickpeas, a further two cloves of raw garlic, the home-made tahini, generous portions of chopped basil and coriander, and the juice of 1-2 lemons. "Blitz together until smooth", the recipe tells me, so I do.

The result is something that already looks pretty dippable to me, but that apparently isn't decadent enough, because I'm required to feed in up to 200ml of olive oil while the Kenwood's blades continue to do their thing. "You may not need all the oil," Novelli warns, and is he ever right. I'm barely at the 100ml point when it becomes clear that the contents of the food processor bowl are a bit more, well, liquid than I might want them to be. Not disastrously so - the consistency is still recognisably hummus-y - but christ only knows what it'd have been like with the full quantity of oil.

"Adjust the seasoning and chill until required" is the final instruction, in direct contravention of the introductory claim that this is "delicious served warm with a crusty, rustic bread of your choice". Your mind, J-C: make it up.

The chilling would probably give it a more solid consistency, granted, but recent proximity to oven time means we're still in "warm" territory here, so I take advantage of that by decanting the hummus into a serving bowl, doing a half-arsed presentation job with some black pepper and a slug of extra virgin olive oil for good measure, then serving it as part of a lazy dinner that we'll call "Lidl mezze" because that's exactly what it is. (Although the crusty, rustic bread of my choice - an oven-warmed kalamata olive loaf - is from Sainsbury's. And rather good it is too.)

Go on, you try making it look un-gloopy

The eating: You might feel there's a cynical tone creeping into my words today, so let me make one thing clear: this is pretty good. The herbs are present and correct (visually as well as on the taste buds), the lemon juice gives it a fresh tang, and while there's a bit of a sesame seed aftertaste to the whole thing, I'm going to put that down to my failure to make Mediterranean-standard tahini rather than a flaw in the recipe itself.

If you think "aubergine hummus" sounds suspiciously like baba ganoush with some chickpeas added, you're probably not far wrong. It could actually cope with more chickpeas to give it greater substance - as it stands, it's closer to something you'd spread on your bread than something into which you could successfully dip a carrot stick or a grissino - but the taste and texture are authentic and convincing even if the end result is a bit drippy.

The trouble with aubergines is that they don't really have much of a flavour in their own right, so they tend to absorb what's around them - and one thing that's around them here is garlic. That becomes increasingly evident as I return to the leftovers in the following days. (Sorry Sam.)

As a dish prepared fresh, served warm and polished off in a single sitting, however, I'd quite happily serve this up to my guests with a few tweaks for experience (roast the garlic and use less oil, mainly). "Everyday" it isn't - who can be bothered, frankly? - but it's a damn sight less wilfully complex than a lot of what this now-legendary book has to offer. And for that bullet dodged, I am thankful.

One-word verdict: Sloppy.

Week 44: Sausages with Onion Gravy and Perfect Mash

The book: Riverford Farm Cook Book

The recipes: p257, "Sausages with Onion Gravy"; p288, "Perfect Mash"

A bit later than planned due to the mind-bending awfulness of real-life events, and I can't claim to be entirely in the mood for writing this even now - but in the face of our relative powerlessness to change things in the wider world, perhaps the only reasonable approach is to throw ourselves into harmless distractions like randomised cookery. A kind of self-imposed "bread and circuses", if you will, albeit I don't think even I own a cookbook that would require me to construct a big top for lions and trapeze artists. (Though I wouldn't put it past Everyday Novelli.)

Even before the triumph of the orange-faced fascist, I wasn't altogether sure how the Random Kitchen project would pan out this week considering we tend to roll the dice on a Sunday. This Sunday gone was Sam's birthday, and I didn't know if I had the heart to subject him to whatever the random gods threw our way, so I gave him the right of veto - no skipping the recipe itself, of course (rules are rules), but if it was something uninspiring or actively awful then we could at least hold it over until Monday and go for a Rox Burger instead.

And I fully expected that veto to be exercised when the Riverford Farm Cook Book ended up being the chosen tome. After all, what kind of birthday gift could possibly be hidden in its reliably underwhelming pages? Okra pudding? Deep-fried nettles? Sprouts à l'orange?

Oh. "Sausages with Onion Gravy".

Cinderella, you shall go to the ball! Hic.

In addition to sounding suspiciously un-recipe-like (how many more times during this project are we going to encounter an author trying to pass off "put some stuff with some other stuff" as an actual recipe?), if we're being honest, this one sounds suspiciously un-vegetable-like too. You know, what with the sausages and all. In fairness, though, Riverford do sell organic meats, cheeses and the like alongside their headline veg box range - and insofar as there's any cooking involved in this recipe at all, it certainly involves a vegetable, namely the humble onion. So, taking on board the in-recipe suggestion of serving these bangers with the (ahem) "Perfect Mash" from later in the book (if only to give me more to write about), I set about whipping up an acceptably hearty autumnal birthday feast.

The prep: It'd be wrong to penny-pinch when giving someone your birthday sausage - and for a Spalding boy, it has to be Lincolnshires, of course. Elsewhere, it turns out I'm doing this recipe something of a disservice by disputing its complexity; the gravy does involve quite a long ingredient list, though most of them are store cupboard staples in one form or another, so that's useful.

The only thing I need to buy is the titular onions. I'm not ashamed to admit it takes me a while to parse the line "4 large onions (use half red onions, if possible)". What, I think to myself, are "half red onions"? Is this like semi-dried tomatoes? Are they a pale pink colour like shallots? How come I've never seen them in the supermarket before?

C'mon, brain.

With that linguistic puzzle duly unravelled - and the results ignored, since I'm going to use red onions almost exclusively (they're on offer at the local Asda and I love them, so nerr) - we're off and ready to go.

The making: Butter and oil are heated in a large frying pan. The sausages are added, cooked until browned all over, then set aside. Next, the thinly sliced onions are added to the pan and cooked, covered, over a super-low heat for 45 minutes, during which time Sam's eyes start to sting like crazy and eventually pop out of their sockets altogether.

The introduction to the recipe does state that it "includes generous amounts [of gravy] to satisfy even the most diehard fanatic", and I'm starting to see why...

That's a lot of onions

...but the slow process of stirring and cooking (during which the virtues of using a non-stick pan become evident) soon cuts the onions down to size:

That's better

A dessertspoon of sugar is stirred through to help the onions caramelise a little, then a dessertspoon of flour is stirred through to help the onions thicken a little. 400ml of beef stock and 100ml of red wine are the next additions ("chicken stock" and "beer" are offered as alternatives here, which: nope) before the sausages are returned to the pan.

At this stage they're practically swimming...

Glub

...but 20 minutes of simmering really does reduce down the liquid and concentrate the flavour like the recipe suggests, and pretty soon we're ready to roll. The final touch is the addition of a tablespoon each of mustard, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce. This ought to give things a nice kick, and I am definitely on board with this approach.

In the meantime, I've been making the "Perfect Mash" (a bold claim, Riverford), which basically involves a ratio of 10 parts cooked and mashed/riced potato to 1 part milk, 1 part melted butter and 1 part - oh yes - double cream.

in me now pls

You can probably work out the "method" part of the recipe for yourself, so I won't insult your intelligence by regurgitating it here. Since this all seems heroically unhealthy, I decide to quickly prep some green beans in a vain attempt to salvage some kind of nutritional value from the day (though I'm acutely aware that this goes against every principle of birthday indulgence).

The eating: Well now. There isn't an easy way to make this kind of thing look elegant on a plate - bangers and mash can only be arranged in so many ways, after all, most of them not especially pleasing on the eye. Add in the fact that there is a lot of gravy - I wouldn't even necessarily call it "gravy" any more, it's really just red onion chutney but a bit wetter - and the presentation side of things is never going to be an aesthete's delight.

See?

It's basically just a pile of stuff. But oh! what stuff. The mash, the mash is good. The mash is creamy. I don't know if I'd call it "perfect". But the onion chutney gravy? It's perfect. Just gloriously melty and gooey and packed with a richness and depth of flavour that takes the meal from comfort food to a whole new level of indulgence. Combined (OK, "smushed together") with the mash, the end result is plain lovely, a warm woolly sweater of a meal for a murky November evening.

Since you can't really go wrong with sausages, mash and gravy, I was expecting something great but predictable from this week's choice (like the key change before the final chorus of "Fångad av en stormvind", say), but this is actively epic. Against all odds, I am very, very impressed with something from the pages of the Riverford Farm Cook Book! And all it took was the addition of some meat.

But no, seriously, the vegetable really is the star here - it is, in the parlance of my native region, proper cush. Slow cooking, kids - it's the way forward (and it's one reason I'm glad we do Random Kitchen at the weekend when I actually have time for this shit).

One-word verdict: Celebratory.

Week 43: Korma, Courgette and Chickpea Burgers with Sweetcorn, Pepper and Avocado Salsa

The book: My green recipe folder

The recipe: no. 21, "Korma, Courgette and Chickpea Burgers with Sweetcorn, Pepper and Avocado Salsa"

Phew. That's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? It's back to my folder of recipes from friends and family for this week's Random Kitchen, although I can't promise anything quite as retro and, well, three-dimensional as Week 36's Stuffed Rice Salad.

The chosen dish this time round comes from a selection of recipes my mum e-mailed me shortly after I landed in Germany, post-graduation but pre-finding-a-job, in the hope that I might learn to stand on my own two feet in the kitchen. While it's true that I immediately did better than on my previous stint on Teutonic turf (a university year abroad in Hamburg where I primarily survived on pasta, pizza and takeaway döner), and some of the recipes she imparted are still in my armoury even now - most notably a "Hungarian"-style pasta sauce that mainly involves a chopped Mattessons sausage and fucktons of cheese - several of them remain sadly untouched.

And this was among them until the fickle finger of random.org decided otherwise. Hurrah! The internets inform me that this is an Ainsley recipe from his BBQ book, which leads me to assume that my mum must have snipped it out of a magazine at some point, because my folks aren't exactly mad-keen summertime grillers. In any case, it's a vegetarian dish that promises to be both interesting and substantial - I'm looking at you, Kafka - and Ainsley claims the "burgers" are just as good (or at least not significantly worse) cooked in a frying pan rather than on a charcoal grill. Since it's a foggy day in late October and thus not exactly barbie weather, let's see if he's right.

Presented without comment

The prep: Lots to buy in here, since this is effectively two recipes in one. For the burgers, I'll need courgettes, carrots and crunchy peanut butter - for some reason, I opt for the "whole nut" version of the latter even though I know it's basically useless for spreading on Ryvita, which will be the fate of the rest of the jar - as well as some curry paste (the recipe claims curry powder is also fine, but I suspect the stickiness of the paste will come in handy for binding) and wholemeal breadcrumbs. A new Asda has just opened in our corner of Lewisham and they haven't quite worked out the levels of demand for their in-store bakery yet, so reduced-price multigrain buns are readily available for breadcrumbing purposes.

Looking at the salsa recipe, I realise I have precisely one of the ingredients in stock (seasoning excluded), and that's red chillies, which live on permanent freezer standby for moments like this. As such, my shopping list is extended to include a small tin of sweetcorn, a large red pepper, a lemon, a small red onion and two small ripe avocados. Whatever else may happen, we'll be hitting our five-a-day target with this meal alone.

The making: Right then. There's quite a lot of fine chopping, dicing and grating involved in the instructions for this one, but I'm going to use the food processor as much as possible. Partly because I almost removed the end of my finger while hacking away at an onion the other night, partly because I suspect the burgers will benefit from a more consistent ingredient texture anyway, and partly because, well, I'm lazy.

Grease me up

A chopped onion is fried in butter and oil for five minutes, then a crushed garlic clove is added along with two shredded courgettes and 225g of shredded carrot. I don't know why one vegetable merits a specific weight measurement and the other doesn't. Is there such a thing as a standard courgette size? I think not, Ainsley. After a further five minutes of cooking, this mixture is left to cool. A drained tin of chickpeas is blended in the food processor (the only time I'm actually meant to use it in this recipe) and stirred into the cooled vegetable mixture along with - deep breath - 75g of the freshly blitzed breadcrumbs, a couple of teaspoons of the curry paste, a couple of healthy dollops of the not-so-buttery peanut butter, an egg yolk, and some seasoning.

Once nicely mixed to form a sticky coherent mass, this is shaped into "four or more burgers". If I was doing them on the grill then I might go for four, but in a pan I imagine they'll need to be a bit smaller if they're not to fall apart while being manhandled later on, so half a dozen it is. These are floured (my idea, not the recipe's - I've learned from bitter experience) and left in the fridge to chill for "at least two hours" lest they risk disintegration.

The world's most disappointing box of Krispy Kreme donuts

Meanwhile, I prepare the salsa, which simply involves chopping the pepper and onion, de-stoning and dicing the avocados, then stirring them all together with the drained canned sweetcorn, the chopped red chillies, and the zest and juice of a lemon. Couldn't be simpler. (It's worth noting that the recipe does offer an alternative to the salsa, namely a "passata sauce", but that sounds incredibly dull compared with this colourful effort.)

Now all that's left is to remove the chilled veggie patties from the fridge and carefully pan-fry them for about 4 minutes on each side - mm, more butter and oil! - until they're ready to be served. They're quite substantial in their own right, so I decide that a handful of potato wedges will do in terms of a side dish. Other than that, the only question is how to present it all - I take something of a scattergun approach to serving the salsa, since it's all going to get smushed together with forkfuls of burger in the end, though I'm starting to see why this recipe would lend itself to the BBQ bun option of "just stuff it all in there".

Wedgetarianism

The eating: There have been some right old hits and misses in the 43 weeks of the Random Kitchen to date, so it's a relief to be able to keep things simple and say: this is great.

I mean, it's not perfect. For a start, I can see how a chargrilled finish to the outsides of the burgers would improve them in a way that pan-frying can't really replicate. And although the various binding agents (egg, peanut butter, curry paste) and the hours of chilling mean the patties don't fall apart while being cooked, they do basically disintegrate as soon as they come into contact with a fork, which suggests their deployment at your summer barbecue might swiftly degenerate into "here you go, veggie friends, have some mush in a bun!". This might have been even more true if I'd chopped the patty ingredients myself instead of letting the Kenwood take the strain (although a more rustic burger consistency could have been a price worth paying - they're perhaps a bit too smooth and samey as they stand).

These are all very minor quibbles, though. The main thing is the flavours are great, both the burgers and the accompaniment. Between the warm curry nuttiness of the patty mix and the sharp chilli and lemon kick of the salsa (plus the sweet chilli sauce we end up liberally applying to the allegedly spiced potato wedges), this is a veritable explosion on the taste buds - and with all the elements of spice and seasoning firmly in the chef's hands, you can make the individual components as hot or as mild as you like them.

I'm not sure what else there is to say. If I'm being honest, the Random Kitchen has occasionally started to feel like a bit of a chore recently (I know, I know - self-inflicted wounds much?), but for all this recipe involves a lot of steps and a certain amount of waiting time, it's all very straightforward and the end results are well worth the effort. This is a colourful and flavourful meal, a well-timed dose of summer just as the clocks go back and the nights start to draw in - and, should this happen to be a relevant criterion in your household, it should be substantial enough to placate all but the most voracious of carnivores too. Score!

One-word verdict: Vegetastic.

Week 42: Banana Split

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

The recipe: p180, "Banana Split"

The random.org selection of the student cookbook from the very first week of the Random Kitchen project prompts an immediate but not unwelcome LeAnn Rimes earworm, because that's how my brain works. At least that's a good start.

First impressions suggest that this week's recipe is going to be insultingly simple, not only because of the book it's taken from, but because, well, it's a banana split. We're not exactly talking haute cuisine here. Still, I'm lagging behind a bit following a long weekend in Sofia, and while this probably wouldn't be the first thing on my wishlist after four days in a country where even the coffees are desserts...

My lovely chocolate lumps

...I am emphatically on board with the "simplicity" part of the equation.

And come to think of it, it must be years since I last had a banana split. It wouldn't be my first port of call when it comes to ice cream treats nowadays (and I suspect my childhood encounters with Chinese restaurant banana fritters have scarred me by association - hot oil and sugar, yum), but it's something I'm willing to welcome back into my culinary life for the purposes of this project, so let's see how the student-/idiot-friendly Jan Arkless version pans out.

The prep: I am confused. Jan claims to have written How To Boil An Egg "specifically for the person who knows absolutely nothing or very little about cooking", explaining "the simple things that one is supposed to know by instinct". Why, then, is she so reluctant to actually tell me what to use in this recipe? I'm supposed to buy ice cream (no flavour specified), chopped nuts (no variety specified), and have free choice as to whether to buy chocolate sauce or use Jan's home-made variety from the previous page - which, it transpires, involves melting a "chocolate bar" (cooking/regular chocolate not specified) with a little cold water.

You're supposed to be making life easy for the kitchen novice, Jan, not introducing unnecessary layers of choice and complexity. Get it together.

(In any case, I went for posh vanilla, almonds, and cooking. Since you didn't ask.)

The making: The bananas are split in half lengthways. Even with a sharp knife this proves problematic, with some undesirable crossways splittage also occurring, but I suppose it won't be too noticeable once everything's been squidged together.

I'd arrange the banana pieces in a boat if I had one, but a regular shallow bowl will have to do instead. Jan wants me to "sandwich the banana halves together with spoonfuls of ice cream". I get the idea - make it so the banana, its footprint duly widened, stands up nicely in the bowl - but in reality the ice cream doesn't have the desired adhesive effect, and it would have made more sense to just let the banana halves lie splayed and pile the other ingredients on top. Ho hum. Maybe a boat-shaped receptacle would have helped.

Anyway, once the banana sandwich is vaguely intact and upright (albeit slowly starting to fall apart), the chocolate sauce à la Jan is spooned on top - or "glooped", more like, since her non-starter of a recipe yields a product with the displeasing consistency of mud.

Next, I am supposed to "decorate" the split with thick cream - again, with no indication as to what I should actually do. Thick spooning cream being what it is, I have little choice but to follow the "unattractive dollop" school of decoration. None of which matters all that much, since the above sins are promptly masked by a scattering of nuts and sprinkles. (Hang on - it's "nuts or sprinkles", according to the method. Yet the ingredient list calls them both "optional". STOP CONFUSING ME, ARKLESS.)

Fuck's sake. Anyway, guess what - a basic recipe with a flawed concept and little guidance in terms of ingredients or method ends up looking pretty crap.

The non-sticky sticky stuff

At least give me the option of camouflaging the edges of the rapidly diverging banana halves with squirty cream or something. That's just miserable.

The eating: You know what it tastes like, so I'm not going to insult your intelligence by describing it any further. It's nice. It's fine. It's a banana with ice cream, cream cream, and some toppings. It's a banana split. Fin.

I just can't get over the sheer futility of the endeavour. Even allowing for the kitchen n00b focus adopted by How To Boil An Egg, I have no idea how this "recipe" is meant to benefit anyone - it doesn't impart any useful kitchen skills or ingredient insights, and if your imagination is so limited that you can't come up with a way of serving fruit and ice cream without needing to be talked through it (and come up with a better way than this, frankly), then maybe you need to accept that ready meals and Just Eat are your future.

Am I being cruel? The book is from 1986, after all, and I get that we weren't quite as sophisticated in our tastes back then, but even as a 7-year-old I'm quite sure I managed to invent more interesting desserts armed only with an ice cream scoop, a can of squirty cream and copious quantities of those tooth-destroying silver balls. It's not hard. Unlike the balls. (Ouch.)

Oh well. Fine.

One-word verdict: Superfluous.

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.