Category: Tasty Reads

Detox Soup

Hello Friends, consider this post my public service announcement for the year.  Detox Soup is my New Year’s Day present to you.  For anyone who is planning to imbibe on 31st December, a large bowl of detox soup should set us on the path to recovery on 1 January!

Detox Soup1

I found the recipe for Detox Soup in 365 Good Reasons to Sit Down and Eat by Stephane Reynaud which is an excellent book on (mostly) French cooking.  It was my choice for our Tasty Reads Cookbook Club for November and this is both the first recipe in the book and the first recipe I made from it.

Since then, I have made this soup a number of times, it has become my go-to meal for when I want something quick, easy and life-affirming or when I want to feel virtuous.  When I am feeling not so virtuous, it goes very well with some grilled cheese on crusty bread!  I don’t really believe in “detoxing” but eating this soup does make me feel like I am doing something positive for myself.

Detox Soup 2

Whether or not you use the Detox Soup to ease your aching head and over worked liver or to add a moment of positive self care into the first day of the new year, can I suggest you make some early and keep it in the fridge for the first?  It will be there when you need it the most!

Or it can add  a moment of positive self-care into the first day of the new year.

I have already made my batch although we currently have a sick dog so I doubt I will be drinking on NYE in case I need to make (another) trip to the emergency vet.  🙁

Detox Soup 4

The Recipe – Detox Soup

Complete with a picture of someone looking very hungover made from the ingredients!

Detox Soup recipe

 

Those of you with an eagle eye may have noticed that there is some sliced fennel in my soup which is not in the recipe.  The second time I made this soup I had half a fennel in the fridge that needed using so I sliced it up and added it into the pot.  I really liked the flavour it brought so I add it in all the time now.  I also use vegetable stock instead of water in my soup.

This also explains why I have garnished my soup with a fennel frond and not the celery leaves in the original picture.  Speaking of which…I think I have done not too bad a  job of replicating that picture…

Detox Soup Collage

If the hair of the dog is more your bag, 1 January is Bloody Mary Day so you can get your vodka on with one of my favourite Bloody Mary recipes here.

I think for most of us, 2021 was not the remedy to 2020 that we were all hoping for.  Lord only knows what 2022 has in store for us!  Whatever it brings, I hope you and your loved ones stay safe, healthy and have a wonderful year!

In a Pickle about Piccalilli – REPOST

When i was a child, one of my favourite things to eat was a McDonald’s Cheeseburger.  The worst thing – the pickle.  I goddamn hated those pickles.  Now, I love all sorts of pickles and this recipe for Piccalilli was a beauty!   It is super quick and super tasty.  And also very pretty with all it’s different colours.

Piccalilli
Piccalilli

I was inspired to make some pickles after a visit to Meatmaiden.  One of their entrees is a “Quick Pickled Heirloom Veg with Chilli and Goat Curd”.  These are just clean, fresh, , delicious and a perfect counterpoint to the meat, meat and more meat of the rest of the menu.

I found a recipe for a quick Piccalilli in Slow, one of the Tasty Reads Book Club books.

Piccalilli 2
Piccalilli 2

According to the fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, Piccalilli is

“an English nterpretation of Indian pickles, a relish of chopped pickled vegetables and spices”

dating back to 1758.

But enough education.

You wouldn’t think that pickles were that contentious….but hooley dooley did this cause a commotion in la maison de la retro food.

“That’s not piccalilli,”  said the Fussiest Eater in the World.

“Is so” I said.

“Not like any I’ve ever seen” he muttered.

The thing is, he has only ever known piccalilli as this luridly coloured, mushed up kind of chunky paste in a jar. I have never been able to bring myself to taste this because to my eye it looks totally unappealing!

Piccalilli Recipe

I didn’t make the ham hock terrine but if you feel so inclined, this is a two for one!

Piccalilli (2)

 

I”m not sure where you fall on the spectrum of piccalilli, all I can say is this fresh version was delicious and even if you are a diehard lurid yellow stuff in a jar fan, it’s certainly worth a try!  And it might just change your mind!

 

 

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Arrivederci Made In Italy

It seems like only the other day that I was writing that I had finished cooking through Cantina and now here I am also having finished Made in Italy by Silvia Colloca!  Admittedly I only had eleven recipes left to cook when I started but I am still pretty proud of myself!  The cover claims “more than 80 authentic recipes from the heart of Italy”.  Of the…I’m not going to count them, so let’s just call it 80 recipes, I made 34 so I’ve cooked 42.5% of the recipes contained therein.

Made in Italy – The Summary

Made in Italy contains fairly standard Italian fare, which is probably the reason why a) I cooked so many recipes from it and b) why I was able to do the last few quite quickly – the ingredients and the techniques are familiar to most home cooks.  The dishes include pastas, pizza, breads, cakes, salads, and seafood.  Not to mention delicious little snacks/appetisers like these Olives All ‘Ascolana!

Made in Italy - Stuffed Olives

It also contains gorgeous photos of the areas in Italy that the book covers (Marche, Abruzzo and Molise so would also make a lovely gift for armchair travellers!

I also liked that many of the recipes were really quick and easy to prepare.  This was particularly refreshing coming on the tails of Cantina where pretty much every recipe was either incredibly elaborate to cook or had had to come by ingredients.

Made in Italy - Bear's Cake

My Favourite Recipes

These were the recipes that got over 4.7 (out of 5) in my personal rating scale.  The ones marked with an asterisk are my absolute favourites.

Sides, Salads and Appetisers

  • Broccolini cooked with chilli and garlic
  • Crostini with lemon, ricotta and spinach
  • Grilled primo sale and vegetable salad (The primo sale is homemade cheese and was delicious)*
  • Olives All’ascolana*

Main Meals

Desserts

 

Made in Italy - Apricot and Olive Cake

Made in Italy  – My least Favourite things

The St Martin Rolls were not good at all – I suspect this was due to the use of self-raising flour rather than plain flour.  I didn’t rate any of Silvia’s slices of bread but these were by far the worst.

And, whilst the landscape and food photography was beautiful there were a few too many pictures of Silvia looking impossibly thin.  Then again, if I looked that good, I would want to be showing my perfect figure off in many photos too!

Overall, I would rate this book 4.5 stars out of 5.  It is a very nice addition to the genre of Italian cookbooks and one that I know I will cook from over and over!

If you are looking for a last-minute gift idea for a friend who has been to Italy I can recommend Made in Italy as both a lovely souvenir of a trip and a great cookbook.  Be prepared to pay though.  Even used copies on Amazon are selling for upwards of $50!  Let me know if you want any of the recipes listed above, I can scan them through for you.

Next Tasty Reads book I will be cooking through is Hugh Fearnley Whitingstall’s River Cottage Light and Easy – this will be a welcome counterbalance to the rich food after Christmas so I am looking forward to it!  I have 33 recipes left to cook so it is likely to be a full year effort!

And tell me…what is your favourite Italian cookbook?

Have a wonderful week!

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Hasta Luego Cantina!

Hola amigos!!!!  It’s done!!!  It’s taken me SIX years but have finally finished cooking my way through Cantina by Paul Wilson.  Not every recipe mind you, just the ones I wanted to cook.  Sixty-one recipes.  Which is more than enough I feel to pass judgement on this as a book.  But first, let’s celebrate with some cake!

 

This was my birthday cake this year, a cake spent in the middle of lockdown when we were allowed no visitors.  So a very solitary birthday.  But we’re not here to talk about that.  We’re here to talk about Cantina as exemplified by this recipe. Because everything that is wrong with this book is in this recipe.  As is everything that is right.  So let’s get to it.

A Rose is A Rose is A Rose

A rose may be a rose.  And a rose by any other name may smell as sweet.  (Ooh la la – look at me, with the Gertrude Stein and the Shakespeare refs in the one post!!!)  But, apart from me showing off my fancy book learning, seriously, Cantina bandies about terms that have one meaning to mean something different.

(I have already waxed lyrical about how annoying this book on this point ere.  So if you want to see my earlier rant click here.)

This is quite clearly a cake.

Except in Cantina where it is called a Lemon Aspen and lime Slice with Mescal Roasted Pineapple. Maybe I’m being really pedantic here but I’ve been cooking out of this book for 6 years. Believe me, I need to vent!

But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece…

You may have noticed my slice..erm cake is missing the Mescal Roasted Pineapple. The cheapest mezcal I could find was $55 a bottle.  Most were in the range of $90-100.  Of which I would use 80ml of a 750 ml bottle.  I’m sure that over time I would be able to find other uses for the remaining 89% of that bottle.

This seems likely given the general state of the world

 

Seriously dropping that much money to use less than a tenth of the bottle for is frivolous at the best of times.  Let alone during  a global pandemic / economic crisis etc.  Fair enough the book was published in 2014 so way before covid but the cost equation still stands.  It’s a lot of money to drop on one recipe.  And you know it’s not like you can use the remainder on the recipe for Chorizo with Apricot and Mezcal Aioli (again, not an aioli).  Because when you read that recipe it contains no goddamn mezcal at all.  None.  Nyet. Cero.

I was so incensed at this the first time round I tweeted the publisher.

They responded that it was a typo.

Eerrrrrrmmmmmm … no. 

Speaking from embarrassing experience, a typo is when you work for an accounting firm and you hand your boss a report that leaves the o out of the word accounting.

Twice.

 

Cantina 5

Why’d you have to make things so complicated?

This slice is made up  of a  lemon cake, a lemon syrup, a mousse, a lime curd glaze and the mezcal roasted pineapple.  Five components.  Thirty-two ingredients if you make your own lime curd (I did not) and the pineapple (which as per above, I also did not make).

Included in these thirty two ingredients is 100g of lemon aspen.  Do you know what lemon aspen is?  Nope, me either.  According to Cantina’s glossary, it is

“A small, pale yellow fruit, with a lemon flavour and aroma and spongy flesh…it is available from bush food specialists and gourmet greengrocers”.

Let’s just put aside the fact that it was neither available from gourmet greengrocers or bush food specialists when I was looking for it.

Because you know what else is a small pale yellow fruit with a lemon flavour and aroma?

A  lemon.

Readily available all over the damn place.

I also made the soft shell crab tacos with guacamole, shaved fennel and sweetcorn salad  for my birthday dinner.  Softshell crabs weren’t available for love or money so I made these with lobster tails. Because you know, it was my birthday and dammit if I wasn’t going to get fancy!!!

Cantina 6

 

It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely

You know the absolute worst thing about Cantina?  It’s cheffy, it’s pretentious, it’s fiddly, pretty much everything was a pain in the arse to cook.  But when they worked, which was most of the time?  They were so damn tasty that they almost made all the effort worthwhile.  So, whilst I part of me really wants to consign this book to the second-hand shop pronto, I am going to hang onto it for a little while longer!

Both the cake/slice and the tacos were mouthwateringly delicious, even if they were also a lot of work to prepare!

The standout recipe for me from Cantina was the Heirloom tomato escabeche.  It was so good!!!!!

I have a challenge with myself that I will reduce either through binning or donating 1000 things in the next 12 months.  Twenty days in I am up to 190 so it is going well.  But there’s a long way to go I may need to put Cantina on the donation pile later in the year!  

Cantina3

Next up on my Tasty Reads book cook though  Silvia Colloca’s Made in Italy.  I only have about ten recipes left to cook from it so I should easily be done by the end of the year.  And based on everything I have already cooked it is pretty down to earth which is exactly what I needed after the high-end madness that was Cantina!

So tell me, do you have a cookbook you find infuriating?  What was frustrating about it? Did you keep it or give it away?

And have a great week!

 

Mexican Manhattan

In the past, I have not been entirely complimentary about Cantina, by Paul Wilson.  This cocktail may change all that because it is DE-LIC-OUS!!!  The Mexican Manhattan may just be my new favourite cocktail!  I’m not sure if I am sad or glad that I am currently in the middle of Feb Fast.  If I wasn’t off the booze, I imagine I would by now have had many more than the one I have had.  My tastebuds are weeping, my liver is cheering.  I think it’s probably a draw!

Mexixan Manhattan2

The Mexican Manhattan cocktail combines the vanilla and spice flavours of anejo tequila with the sweet / tartness of Cherry Heering and the bittersweet of Sweet Vermouth to produce a cocktail that is complex and delicious. I think this is a cocktail to savour over an hour or so in order to really enjoy the flavour and aroma!

Mexican Manhattan3

The traditional garnish for a Manhattan and this Mexican Manhattan is a maraschino cherry.  I thought I had a jar of these in the fridge however when I checked?  Nada. Luckily, I had some candied kumquats in the fridge so I subbed these in.  I really enjoyed the citrussy element this brought to the cocktail.  If you are making it, however, feel free to use the more traditional cherry.

 

Cantina Update

My aim this year is to cook through the recipes I have left in Cantina, which at last count was 30.

I have made this cocktail and a slightly dumbed-down version of the Street Style Tostadas with Seared Tuna and Wood -Grilled Vegetables with a Finger lime crema. ( My veggies were grilled on the grill and my limes were of the non-finger variety.) This was however totally delicious!

Tuna Tostada

I have the following left to cook:

Eggs and Breakfast

  • Pistachio and Spiked Chocolate Hotcakes with Raspberry Crema.  I will probably make this as a dessert as I am not a huge fan of a sweet breakfast.

Masa Delicacies and Street Food

  • Street Corn with Goat’s Crema and Black Olives
  • Street Corn with Truffled Crema and Truffle Cheese
  • Mr Wilson’s Fish Tacos with Slaw and Two Sauces
  • Soft-Shell Crab Tacos with Guacamole, Shaved Fennel and Sweetcorn Salad

Soups

  • Ranchero Style Beef Broth.  This one has been on and off the list at least a dozen times.  I have decided not to make the accompanying Bone Marrow and Chimichurri Toast because whilst it sounds delicious, I feel it would make the dish too complicated.

Fish and Seafood

  • Dory Pescado Asado.  This is probably next on my list to cook.
  • Prawn Cazuela Veracruz
  • Soft-Shell Crabs al Pastor

Meat, Moles and Barbecue

  • Blood Orange and Avocado Salsa – you might be wondering why this is in the meat section.  It was meant to accompany a chicken dish which I did not like the sound of.  The salsa?  Sounds awesome!
  • Lamb Belly Ribs with Pomegranate and Flor De Jamaica
  • Low and Slow Beef Short Ribs with Cerveza Caramelised Onions
  • Glazed Mexican Spiced Lamb Chops with Ancient Grains and Pickles
  • Goat Barbecoa with Green Mole and Green Rice

Ancient Grains and Vegetables

  • Kale Caesar
  • Charred Broccoli with Salsa Mexicana

Desserts

  • Coconut Panna Cotta with Napa Style Strawberry and Mango Salad – I was going to make it this weekend but I realised that Napa Style means it has wine in it.  It would be a bit too tempting to have to open a bottle of Pinot Noir, which is my favourite red when I am trying to not drink!
  • Coffee and Tequila Creme Caramel.  This may come off the list.  It requires a spendy coffee flavoured tequila which I can’t justify buying in this, my year of frugality!
  • Pistachio Chocolate Souffle with Dulce De Leche Ice Cream
  • Salted Caramel Ice Cream Churros Tacos

Drinks

  • Rosella Royale.  This contains something called Pulque.  I have no idea what it is or if I can find it.  It may come off the list.
  • Tijuana Sunset
  • Frozen Lychee Margarita

So that means I only have 23 recipes left to cook!  Which seems do-able in 10 and a half months but  I know how complicated some of these recipes are…I’ll check back in again next month.

 

Mexixan Manhattan5

If you would like to join me in cooking any of these, the book is Cantina by Paul Wilson.

 

Have a great week!