Winter Review

So what can I say? We're at the end of our 'challenge'.  It's been fun, really fun! But I have to say that towards the end we were flagging.  It almost doesn't feel like a year since we began, but we have been married for 14 months now (er...where did that time go?!) so we're a lot wiser in many ways, but especially in the cooking department. 

As you will see from our last post, we sadly didn't make a few recipes.  This was due to various reasons - the most predictable being time constraints.  The beginning of this year just seemed to flash by, and we we had so much going on it was difficult for us to be in two nights of the week to cook together.  Another one we hadn't really predicted before we started the challenge was the flavours.  When we were in, we fancied something easy/comfortable - something that was a comfort food, rather than an experiment that might not work.  This was definitely the case more and more as the challenge went on.  I found this particularly difficult in the last season as there was a lot of meat! I do like meat, but we try to eat vegetarian and fish meals throughout the week too, and it's difficult to cope with two heavy meat dishes several nights in a row!  Lastly it was a conscious decision not to pressure ourselves to 'cook the book', as it was becoming a chore.  We think eating, (and therefore cooking), should not be a chore - it should be fun!

We did predictably have some difficulty sourcing ingredients too - we missed the boat on the sloes and then never got round to doing anything about it at any later stage for example.

A few triumphs were had through the winter though - 
Gluten Free Puff Pastry - a first for me and beginner's luck was definitely mine! I enjoyed it so much, I made it again the next week instead of the filo pastry for the strudel. We were never going to source Gluten Free Filo (can you imagine?!) so why not use something we had already tried?
Hot Spiced Cranberry Punch was the flavour of our new year - and very nice it was too.
We never, ever, need to buy mango chutney again.  We can make our own.  In fact, we're planning Christmas presents already!
Oxtail is super lovely - something neither of us had ever eaten before, but it is such a good cheap cut, we vowed to use it again. 

Andrew's top 5:

Vegetable Stock
Vegetable Soup with Cheesy Herb Toasts
Braised Oxtail with Beer & Red Wine
Mango Coriander & Apple Chutney
Breaded Turkey with Spinach, Walnuts & Honeyed Parsnips
Four Minute Figgy Pudding (sneaky extra!)

Rachel's Top 5:
Mango Coriander & Apple Chutney
Hot Spiced Cranberry Punch
Vegetable Soup with Cheesy Herb Toasts
Braised Oxtail with Beer & Red Wine
Christmas Pudding Ice Cream with Satsumas & Caramel Sauce

There are definitely recipes we'd do again. And there are definitely recipes we wouldn't do again...but that was the idea. We tried pretty much everything and even though we didn't do a few recipes, I don't think we can put this down as a failure.  We set out what we wanted to do and did pretty well I think, in the grand scheme of things.

I thought it a funny coincidence that James Martin had his last show on Saturday Kitchen, pretty much as we finished.  

One piece of advice, if you're going to cook a book - take your time choosing the book! We thought we had lots of variety, but because we wanted to cook by 'season' this meant we ended up feeling there were a lot of 'similar but different' flavours. There was a fair amount of unusual ingredients too, which were difficult to source, and sometimes - downright horrible!

It's been a fun year, cooking a book, so if we have inspired you - good luck! Otherwise, enjoy your culinary creations.


  

Vegetable Stock

Scallops with Black Pudding & Apple Puree

Deep Fried Cod Cheeks in Beer Batter

Pork Loin with Sherry-Roasted Parsnips & Chesnuts

Chunky Vegetable Soup with Cheesy Herb Toasts

Autumn Review

Cooking a book means that we sometimes don't realise where the time has gone, and here we are again - doing our Autumn review a bit later than we should be. 

To tell the truth we actually haven't finished the Autumn recipes either...we were late last time and were hoping to catch up with ourselves.  Instead we have increased the number of recipes which have not yet been completed to two! These will follow in due course.  We're definitely not intending to make shortcuts but we are clearly behind...

To start off with the good stuff - our Top 5 recipes

Andrew's Favourites:

Baked Custard Tart with Mulled Spiced Plums
Rib-eye Steak with Stick Fries & Chateaubriand Sauce
Pot Roasted Chicken with Pumpkin, Sage & Star Anise
Cromer Crab Toastie
Potato, Celeriac & Parsnip Rosti (minus the grouse)

Rachel's Favourites:

Hazelnut-Coated Goat's Cheese with Lemon & Beetroot Salad
Salmon & Pumpkin Risotto
Rib-eye Steak with Stick Fries & Chateaubriand Sauce
Swiss Style Meringues with Coffee Cream
Pistachio Coffee Cake

Few sneaky things this season - I have to confess that we did not cook a grouse.  I know we should have but I went into one of the best butchers in London (we think so and so do a lot of food critics) and they had run out...so I got a chicken instead. Hence why Andrew couldn't really say he liked the Grouse.  To be honest, I was getting a little fed up with Game anyway.  I am more than happy to try new things, but there was quite a lot of meat this season and it was all a bit heavy to be honest.  We are yet to try mackerel with creamed horseradish and sloe jam.  We have missed the Sloe season so will be buying frozen ones soon so we can make a batch.

Calf's liver was more edible than the chicken liver, but again, doesn't leave me wanting more! The cider battered onion rings as an accompaniment were good though. 

There are definitely a few meals we will take away from this season - cromer crab, salmon and pumpkin risotto, and chateaubriand sauce with steak.  I personally loved the amount of beetroot and pumpkin.  I have never really eaten pumpkin before, but now I know I really enjoy it and will be trying some next year. 

Gluten free substitutes - again no problems.  I was worried about the welsh cakes, but they tasted just fine, even if they didn't rise quite as much as I was hoping. If you are reading this and are worried about cooking gluten free - I hope this proves that it isn't a scary thing. Most of the time we just replace the gluten items with a gluten free substitute and it works just fine.  You just need to have lower expectations - it's not going to be quite the same as a gluten equivalent but still tastes great!

You will see that we have already started eating winter recipes, so we're on track for this season.  Roll on March 22nd when we will have hopefully finished all of the recipes in the book!

Ps - we used our redcurrant jelly on Christmas day, instead of cranberry sauce - it was lovely!

Baked Custard Tart with Mulled Spiced Plums

Pan-Fried Chicken with Walford Salad

Summer Review

So better late than never! We actually ended up finishing the Summer season of recipes on Tuesday 6th October - just over 2 weeks after the 'due date' of 21st September.  This was due to a multitude of reasons:

• We had an extremely busy summer and often didn't have weekends free to do the tricker recipes.  
• We were in a different location for the whole of August, house-sitting and as a result ended up with less time to cook due to a longer commute.  
• We just majorly underestimated the amount of recipes - lots of small recipes in there which we thought we'd be able to crack out really quickly and then didn't...

We also had a stupid 'thing' about a few of the recipes - namely the Lamb Loin and the Rabbit Loin.  We have to admit, that the cost caused most of the apprehension here, as well as how to source them. Therefore, we just put these two recipes off.  So much so that they ended up being the last recipes we did - not helpful for the wallet! As it happened, the 'Ginger Pig' butcher in Marylebone was very helpful in terms of supplying the goods, and it wasn't as expensive as you'd think.  

To focus on these two recipes for a moment, I will start by saying that £13 for two lamb chops isn't really that bad when the chops were THAT big, and tasted amazing! Possibly the best lamb I'veever tasted.  The loin is a tiny piece of meat, which is kind of housed somewhere within the chop, so we decided this wasn't a bad compromise for something we were worried about sourcing.  Furthermore the rabbit cost £8, but that was the whole rabbit and the butcher kindly cut out the loins for us.  Leaving us with the rest of the rabbit (currently in our freezer) for another recipe (watch this space for Autumn).  So really, what were we worrying about?! 

We found this season to be quite heavy on the desserts, so much so that we had a bit of a sugar overload - we'd finish one cake and be making the next batch of Madeleines or brownies. The Poached Cherries deserve a special mention here for overdosing on the good stuff - it left your lips feeling sticky and your brain turning to mush purely because of the sweetness!

We also noticed a lot of strong flavours going on, which strikes me as odd for a what should be a lighter season.  The salad in the Cold Chicken Breast with Warm Red Onion & Grape Salad, the Slow Roasted Tomatoes with Worcestershire Sauce, the salad in the Deep Fried Tomato Fritters with Red Onion Salad and the Soused Herrings with Red Chilli & Chive Cream were all so strong it sometimes hurt my eyes! 

Gluten free substitutes again weren't too much of a problem in the end.  The cakes all worked very well with gluten free flour, apart from the Teacakes.  We stuck to the recipe rather than use a tried and tested gluten free recipe for a bun of a similar kind.  Although I managed to get a nice dough which I could knead (very unusual), the final taste to me, resembled a rock! I would probably stick to a tried and tested recipe for teacakes next time.  We are guilty of a gluten free cheat too...the pizzas we made weren't actually using our own dough.  I had a pack of part baked pizza bases in my cupboard, and this certainly made that recipe a lot easier! I have made my own pizza 'dough' before, but it actually resembles more of a batter so we thought we would simplify things by just making the topping on this occasion.  The croissants were initially difficult to source - my Mum was staying so I sent her on a mission to find them, and she was eventually successful! The gluten free croissants were really nice, as they just fell apart when soaked in the custardy mix.  The dessert looked much nicer than the product we started with (think dry, deformed croissant).  

We had a bit of a problem finding Sardines - even in Cornwall! We used Red Mullet in the end, which was a colourful substitute. 

Something that was a real treat, was being able to cook a few things on the BBQ - Beef & Fennel Koftas, Lemon & Rosemary Lamb with Tahini Aubergines.  We both love cooking things on the BBQ that aren't 'normal' fayre - ie burgers and hot dogs! Being able to cook some real good food on the BBQ was always something we were going to do, whilst we had a garden with a BBQ to play with!

Top 5:

Here are our headline dishes this season...

Andrew's Favourites -

Oven Roasted Apricots with Honey Madeleines

Eggy Croissants with Fresh Raspberries & Zabaglione

Sweet & Sour Pickled Plums

Chicken with Peach & Watercress

Spicy Crab Linguini

Rachel's Favourites - 

Spicy Crab Linguini

Pork Spare Ribs with Coleslaw, Star Anise & Whiskey Glaze

Lemon Verbena Cake with Strawberries & Cream

Tomato, Basil & Mozzarella Pizzas

Egg Croissants with Fresh Raspberries & Zabaglione

You'll have noticed we sneakily started cooking Autumn recipes before we actually finished Summer...well we didn't want to delay any further so that we fell further behind.  Hopefully we can catch up on ourselves and hit next season's target (only 71 days to go!).  

Scrambled Duck Eggs with Crispy Bacon & Watercress

Eggy Croissants with Fresh Raspberries & Zabaglione

Sweet & Sour Pickled Plums

Poached Cherries with Almond Glaze

Scallop & Squid Salad with Fennel & Rocket

Tomato, Basil & Mozzarella Pizzas

Teacakes with Warm Strawberries & Clotted Cream

Spatchcock Duck with Spicy Tamarind Glaze

Pan-fried Pork Fillet with Smoky Tomato Sauce

Sticky Chicken Wings