Challenge fail

Well, I really blew it on this month’s Cookbook Challenge: I didn’t even manage to make one recipe from the selected cookbook. I spent plenty of time drooling over the contents beforehand, but when it came down to where the skillet meets the stove (or whatever), I either didn’t have the skillet (or mostly any other piece of equipment I needed), or I didn’t have the motivation. Oh, and then I left town for the last week of the month.

Challenge 5.1

I have a feeling I’m not going to be buying this cookbook after all. When I first picked it out for the Cookbook Challenge, I had been through it exhaustively. I had covered one whole side of loose leaf paper (aka A4) with the names of recipes I wanted to try. Of course, I had also overlooked how many of them required specialist equipment not currently available to me (you know, things like mixers and cake pans). But even with the ones that are possible with my limited range of tools, I keep finding myself in the same situation: I read over the recipe, realize how similar it is to one I already have or have been wanting to try—and then make that one instead. Over the weekend, I was all set to make Poor Boy Beef Stroganoff, expecting it to be simply a frugal variation on traditional beef stroganoff. Then I re-read the recipe and noticed that, if I made the cookbook version, after preparing all the major components of the dish—including the accompanying starch—I was going to have to put the whole thing in the oven and cook it again.

Challenge engineering

I have two announcements to make:

1. I’ll be running the Cookbook Challenge this month--it's that time again.

2. I’ll be cheating.

Perhaps I should explain that second one.

Most of my cookbooks are either in storage (along with all my other stuff), or in Boston. I do have a small selection here—just enough to make a random selection possible, as the Cookbook Challenge was originally conceived. But I’ve decided that what I really want to do is delve into one of the cookbooks that I took out of the local library a few weeks ago and have been browsing through ever since. I need a reason to focus on making some of the recipes, to see if it’s worth investing in. So I’m going to bend the rules this once and choose the cookbook deliberately, rather than randomly.

Home made

Confession: I haven't managed to do any Cookbook Challenge cooking since I got to Boston. I blame the fact that I've only cooked dinner three times in the past 10 days--and one of those was Christmas dinner, which is about as far from a 30-minute meal as you can get. The rest of the dinners have been in restaurants or in other people's houses, as we make the rounds of people in Boston that we haven't seen for more than a year.

So most of the cooking I've managed to squeeze in has been of the "sheer necessity" or the "food gift" variety. In the former category, I made homemade mayonnaise over the weekend, for only the second time ever, when I realized we didn't have any.* In the latter, to bring to friends hosting us, things like homemade chocolates and, yesterday, these cheesy, salty, spicy treats.

Cheesy nibbles
Adapted from Tamasin's Kitchen Bible by Tamasin Day-Lewis
These have been described as being like "homemade Cheez-Its", but I think that's only because they're cheesy and it's really hard to stop eating them. Texturally, they are like tiny, crumbly cookies, and they taste complex and savory. To me they're more like what Cheez-Its want to be when they grow up.

110 g/4 oz plain/all-purpose flour
110 g/4 oz parmesan, grated**
healthy pinches of: salt, freshly ground black pepper, mustard, and cayenne pepper
110 g/4 oz butter, melted

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Mix dry ingredients together, then add in butter and stir until mixture has the consistency of breadcrumbs. (Add more butter if necessary.) Make walnut-sized balls*** and place on baking sheet(s) lined with parchment. Bake 15-20 minutes (reversing position of sheet(s) halfway through) until lightly browned. Sprinkle lightly with more salt and black pepper after removing from oven, and allow to cool on sheet(s).

Makes 20-40.

* I also managed to slip this into the latter category, by bringing some of along yesterday as a gift--I thought my hostess would appreciate it.
** I used a mix of mostly pecorino romano and some sharp cheddar.
*** I used a deep teaspoon measurement to make half-balls. They were a good bite size and went further.

Challenge 4.2

Still struggling to find the time and the ingredients to tackle anything major for The Cookbook Challenge; sadly, 30-Minute Meals doesn't have any delicious recipes consisting solely of half a carrot, two cups of brown rice, and a large lump of blue cheese. However, I have come across a very useful tip, that I have immediately made my own, for making your own salad dressing. In the past, to make vinaigrette I have always worked off a basic recipe of 2 Tbsp acid and 5 Tbsp of oil, which involved a lot of mental arithmetic (not one of my favorite leisure activities) if I wanted to reduce or increase the amount. In her recipe for basic vinaigrette, Rachael Ray suggests the following ratio:

1 teaspoon of acid to every 1 tablespoon of oil

Ta da! Perfectly simple; easy to scale up or down; and no math.

Upon reflection, this is so blindingly obvious that I wouldn't be surprised if everyone else in the entire world knew about it besides me. The suggested ratio for making salad dressing is 1 part acid to 3 parts oil, which I knew; and 3 tsp = 1 Tbsp, which I also knew. I had just never put 2 and 2 together (or, in this case, 1 and 3). And in the event that you haven't either, I share this info with you, since it alone has made this whole exercise worthwhile for me--definitely the equivalent of learning a great new recipe.

Challenge 4.1

(I'm beginning to think the challenge is going to be finding the time and the ingredients to cook anything at all for The Cookbook Challenge, between the parade of dinners out and the random collection of half-empty jars and packets that is all I have to work with at this point.)

The source 30-Minute Meals

The recipe Aglio olio: garlic and oil pasta

The ingredients*
1 lb/450 g linguini
¼ to 1/3 cup olive oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
¼ tsp crushed red pepper
5 anchovy fillets
a handful fresh parsley, chopped**
freshly ground black pepper
grated cheese, for topping

The method Put a large pot of water on to boil. When it's boiling, add salt and pasta. While the pasta is cooking, heat oil in a saucepan, then add garlic, red pepper, and anchovies. Allow this to sizzle gently (don't brown the garlic) for a few minutes, then remove from heat. When pasta is al dente, drain and then return to the hot pan. Pour over the oil mixture and mix thoroughly, seasoning with black pepper to taste. Serve immediately, topped with grated cheese.

The verdict I've been making aglio olio for years, but I was intrigued by the inclusion of anchovies (mainly because I have a jar I'm trying to use up). I didn't really think it worked; all I could taste was the anchovies. That could be because I didn't add any parsley, which I've also never used in this dish (see below). Next time I make this, I'll probably go back to the much simpler version I usually use—olive oil, garlic, and black and red pepper.

* I only had half a pound of linguine, so I halved everything else.
** I didn't have any parsley, so I skipped this. Including it might balance out the anchovy flavor.

Challenge month

So, this is it. The month when I undertake a transcontinental move. Which is scheduled for the week before Christmas. While trying to keep up with my job. And my five-year-old's hectic end-of-school-year social schedule. And maybe occasionally exchange a word with my husband.

Oh, and when I have a few spare minutes, address 85 Christmas cards.

Clearly I don't have enough to do. Why not a Cookbook Challenge too?

Now, before you decide this is the blog of someone who is certifiably insane, and remove me from your blog reader forever, hear my explanation for this decision.

We have to eat. In fact, we have a kitchen full of stuff that we have to eat in the next couple of weeks. That means I have to come up with creative, yet simple, ways to use up half-empty containers of this and that, at a time when I'm not going to have enough time or brain space to think very long about anything food-related.

Not convinced yet? I wasn't either. How was I going to randomly select a cookbook that made this job easier—and was small enough to pack for the part of the month I'd be doing Challenge cooking in Boston?

Turns out I didn't: Miss B did. I was cleaning up the living room the other night and found that she'd pulled a cookbook off the shelf and left it on the floor—one I'd never seen her look at before.

30-Minute Meals by Rachael Ray.

Yes, the cookbook that spawned a Food Network empire, and a bajillion chowhounds with violent opinions (pro or con). Rachael Ray hasn't really been exported, so I've had very little exposure to her, and when I picked this cookbook up about six years ago, I didn't know much about her. Obviously I've heard a bit more now, but not enough to have taken a side yet. So I'm just going to try some recipes, and see what I think then.

As always, I'd be happy to have some company for the ride. What have you got on your cookbook shelf that needs a second look?

A quick refresher on how the Cookbook Challenge works:

1. Count up the number of cookbooks you have. (Include magazines, clipping binders, electronic folders—whatever you've got that you want to explore further.)
2. When you've got a total, pick a number between one and that number. (Better yet, if you can, have someone else do it for you, to ensure that it's really random.)
3. Count through your cookbooks until you get to that number, and pull out the randomly selected cookbook, magazine, folder, etc. (You could also pull names out of a hat if you want to really get serious, but this is quicker.)
4. Commit to cooking at least one new recipe from that resource in the next month. Five, if you want to really challenge yourself.
5. Tell about what you discovered—send me an email, post about it yourself, comment here (I'll report back on what I found). Did you discover a new favorite? Or is this cookbook just a pretty face with nothing in it you can see yourself cooking?

So what do you think? I bet we've all got a busy month ahead of us…but someone has to make dinner if we're going to get through it without going bonkers or broke.

Challenge outtakes

Just in case you’re thinking it’s all sunshine and flowers and effortless production and consumption of deliciousness 24/7 here at Casa Roving Lemon, I thought I’d share a couple of less-than-stellar moments during this past month’s Cookbook Challenge:

1. Zeppoli I was gunning to make it to five recipes this month for once, and the fifth one I had bookmarked was zeppoli—an Italian sweet treat made with fried dough. I read through the recipe, and thought, “Oh, that’s just bread dough. I’ll just use the bread dough I have in the refrigerator.” Completely ignoring that a) the recipe had a much higher ratio of yeast to flour than standard bread dough; and b) I’m always trying to achieve more of a country-bread, slow-rise, chewy tang with my bread dough. This second fact, in particular, gives you pretty much the opposite of what you’re looking for in zeppoli, as I discovered when I bit into one. They tasted pretty much like tiny, fried sourdough rolls. With powdered sugar on them. Not my finest effort. (Not that that stopped me from eating them all.)

2. Broccoli Note to self: if you are fortunate enough to have a child that happily eats her own body weight in broccoli when you produce it in the normal way (or, rather, the way that’s normal for you), don’t change things. Don’t suddenly roast the broccoli and present it to her like that. She will say things like, “Mummy! It has brown stuff on it!” and “Mummy! I don’t like this brown stuff!”. She will try to claw off the brown stuff. With her fingers. She will make faces and gag theatrically and try to scrape her tongue clean. No matter how much you like the broccoli (and I’m sure you will), believe me, this will interfere with your enjoyment of dinner.

3. Dining post hoc(kily) I’ve eaten cold cereal for dinner at least four times in the past month, usually after hockey. By the time I’ve finished training, schlepped all my kit home on the bus, and taken a shower (since the rink does not offer such sissy amenities as hot water), I’ve got no energy left to turn on the stove, even to heat up leftovers.

But, as you can see from the photo at the top (crappy as it is), we still make the effort. Those may be Deep-Fried Sugar-Frosted Mini Dinner Rolls, but, who cares, we’re still gonna decorate ‘em. With cachous! (That’s Australian for what we in the US call “those little silver balls you stick on cakes”.)

3.4/Wrap-up

The source Eat This…It’ll Make You Feel Better!

The recipe Homemade sausage Having previously waxed lyrical about my love of sausage, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try making my own for the first time ever when I found this recipe. Having said that, I’m sure what I did with it would be a violation of the rules of the Cookbook Challenge, if there were any. But since I made it up, there aren’t, so it isn’t. Because basically my version of homemade sausage bears no resemblance to the one in the cookbook, except that they both use ground pork. And fennel. Oh, and grated cheese. (Um, but other than that they are TOTALLY DIFFERENT.)

(Actually, this is a great demonstration of how elastic the whole concept of sausage really is. I started from the premise that I didn’t actually need six pounds of homemade sausage, and that frankly I’m not that keen on parsley…and then I just kind of blazed my own trail from there.)

The ingredients – Dom’s mother’s
6 lbs ground lean pork
2 Tbsp fennel
1 Tbsp pepper
4 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
6 leaves fresh basil, chopped
1 tsp oregano
1 cup grated cheese (optional)
4 yards sausage casing
1 sausage funnel

(Makes 30-35)

The ingredients – RL’s
1 lb ground lean pork
2 tsp fennel
10-12 grinds fresh black pepper
4-6 large pinches salt
2-3 large pinches chili pepper flakes
½ tsp oregano
1 ice cube’s worth of pesto (thawed)
2-3 Tbsp grated pecorino romano cheese

(Makes 12 2-inch patties)

The method For either: pretty simple: put everything in a bowl and moosh it all together with your hands until it's all thoroughly mixed. Then you have two options:

1. If you want to make sausages with casing, put the casing on the funnel and make a knot in the end. Push meat through funnel until casing is filled, then twist into links. Repeat as necessary.

2. If, however, you are like me and can’t be bothered with all that rigamarole, form into patties. Either cook as desired immediately, or freeze for later use.

The verdict I would never have guessed making my own sausage was so straightforward. The whole process took about 30 minutes. I froze most of it for later, but I cooked two patties for dinner tonight: broke them apart and browned the meat in a frying pan, and deglazed the pan with some white wine towards the end. Mixed it into some tagliatelle with more pesto and this roasted broccoli. Wondering how soon I can get away with making it again.

Cookbook Challenge #3 verdict Keep or donate? I was fully expecting to clear some shelf space after this month, but I’m going to keep this book. There is definitely some dated stuff in here, but I found at least another five recipes that I’d like to try out. So Dom’s place in the RL cookbook lineup is secure for a while longer.

Cookbook Challenge #3 wrapup Don’t forget: if you’ve got any cookbook antics that you want to share—let me know!

Challenge 3.3

The source Eat This…It’ll Make You Feel Better!

The recipe Marinara Sauce In Australia, Marinara Sauce seems to refer to tomato sauce with assorted kinds of seafood in it; I can’t remember right now if the same is true in other places. Confusingly, Dom DeLuise calls this plain tomato sauce Marinara Sauce, as in “Fisherman’s Wife Sauce”, and says the name comes from the fact that fishermen’s wives would whip up this quick sauce when the fishing boats came into view over the horizon, and have it ready by the time the boats docked. My theory is that, if this is true, it’s because they were also hoping they’d get some fish to throw in at the last minute.

The ingredients
2-4 Tbsp olive oil
5 cloves garlic, minced*
1 6 oz can tomato paste or equivalent
2 28 oz/4 400 g can(s) tomatoes**
4 Tbsp sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
10 basil leaves, shredded***
pepper****
grated cheese

The method In a large, deep frying pan, heat olive oil and sauté garlic briefly, just until fragrant. Add tomato paste, tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes. Bring to the bubbling point and then simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring regularly to make sure it’s not sticking. Just before serving, add basil, pepper and cheese to taste.

The verdict This is a good, basic, fresh-tasting meatless tomato sauce that I think would adapt well to any number of additions, whether fish, fowl, vegetable, or other. The sun-dried tomatoes (apparently Dom’s mother’s idea) provide a bit more complexity than you get in a standard sauce.

* I also added a pinch of dried chili flakes at this stage.
** I misread this, and used half as much canned tomato as the recipe specifies. It was still good.
*** I didn’t have any fresh basil, so I threw a cube of frozen pesto in at the end.
**** I think Dom has a thing about salt, but I added some here.

Challenge 3.2

The source Eat This…It’ll Make You Feel Better! by Dom DeLuise

The recipe When I picked this cookbook for Cookbook Challenge #3, I envisioned myself making lots of hearty, tomato-based sauces and soups to chase away the winter chills. So I’m a little surprised to realize that everything I’ve flagged so far is a dough recipe. This one really intrigued me, because I’d never heard of an Italian version of egg bread that wasn’t a sweet bread. This one is more like challah or brioche.

The ingredients
1 packet yeast*
1 ¼ cups (10 oz/250 ml) warm water
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp salad oil**
4½ cups/540 g all-purpose/plain flour
2 eggs
1 egg yolk, beaten with one tsp water
3 Tbsp sesame seeds (optional)

The method Dissolve yeast in ¼ cup of the warm water and let stand for about 5 minutes. Add the remaining water, along with the sugar and oil.

Mix in 3 cups of flour and beat until smooth and elastic.*** Beat in eggs, one at a time, then gradually add the remaining 1½ cups flour. Turn dough out of bowl and knead, adding flour as necessary (if the dough becomes sticky) until the dough is shiny and very pliable (you should also be able to see small bubbles under the surface).

Put the dough in a greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled (about 1 hour). Punch dough down, cover and let rise again (about 45 minutes). Punch down again, and divide into 3 equal portions. Roll each portion into a long sausage. On a prepared baking sheet, braid the three strands. Let rise again (about 45 minutes).**** Brush with egg-yolk mixture, and sprinkle with seeds, if desired.

Bake at 375F/190C for about 45 minutes. When done, the crust should be golden brown, and the loaf should sound hollow when tapped.

* Since they don’t sell yeast in packets here, I used 1 generous teaspoon.
** I used light olive oil.
*** My dough was not smooth and elastic at this stage.
**** I completely overlooked this step. This may be why my braid looks somewhat misshapen.

The verdict I still have no idea if this is authentically Italian, or if Dom’s mother adopted it, but he's right about one thing: it makes fantastic toast, topped with butter and jam.

Challenge 3.1

The source Eat This...It'll Make You Feel Better! by Dom DeLuise

The recipe This is Italian home cooking 101: DIY pasta. Even though I already know how to do this (and maybe you do, too), I selected a recipe for homemade pasta as my first Cookbook Challenge #3 recipe for two reasons:

1. this recipe does not use eggs (unlike my family recipe), therefore suitable for vegans and people allergic to eggs (hellooooo C.!); and

2. it is noticeably less gargantuan than my family recipe, therefore likely to be easier to undertake on a day when I want some fresh pasta but don’t have, say, six hours to spend in the kitchen.

The ingredients
3 cups/360 g semolina flour*
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup/250 ml warm water**

The method Pile the flour either in a very large, shallow bowl, or on a countertop or board suitable for kneading dough. Sprinkle the salt over. Make a well in the center of the pile, and add the olive oil. Mix in gently, using the tips of your fingers and being careful to keep the olive oil from escaping.

Making sure the mixture is still in a pile, with a well in the center, pour in about 2 Tbsp of the water and continue mixing. Pull in flour from the outsides of the pile; continue mixing gently and repeat, adding the water a little at a time. Eventually the dough will start to come together, and you can begin to mix it a little more vigorously. When you can, form into a ball and knead briefly, to make sure the dough is consistent, then put under an inverted bowl and rest for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, knead the dough for 3-5 more minutes, until it is soft and pliable. Form into a ball again, put back under the bowl and rest for another 15 minutes.

When ready to make pasta, cut the ball into thirds or fourths. At this point you can roll it flat for noodles, using a rolling pin or a pasta machine, or you can make whatever macaroni shape takes your fancy. What you see in the picture are what my family calls cecchedette (please excuse (or correct!) wildly approximate spelling; I’ve never seen this word written down), which look exactly like gnocchi made from regular pasta dough instead of potato dough. To make these, roll one-quarter of the dough into a sausage about 1 in/2 cm thick, then cut off chunks about the size of the top of your thumb. Then, using your thumb, roll them over the tines of a fork, or a woven basket, so that they flatten and curl over your thumb with the pattern on the outside.

Allow to dry for one hour before cooking, or freeze.*** When ready to cook, drop into salted, boiling water; they will cook in 2-3 minutes. When they float to the top, they’re ready.

Serves 4 people with leftovers.****

* I used 2 cups plain flour and 1 cup coarse semolina, because I wasn’t sure that was the same thing as semolina flour. I’m still not, but it seems to have worked.
** You may need a little more or a little less, depending on your flour and how dry/humid it is where you are.
*** To freeze, space out pieces of pasta on baking trays and leave in freezer until starting to harden, then put in a freezer bag. If you skip the baking-tray step, you will end up with a huge lump of frozen pasta. I promise.
**** Homemade pasta is much more filling than dried pasta, or at least mine is, probably because it’s never as fine.

The verdict This one is a keeper. It's a great alternative to egg pasta; doesn’t take too long to make, gives you the satisfaction of a fairly involved cooking project, and tastes delicious.

Retro cool?

How long does it take for something to go from being perceived as trendy, to becoming dated (and maybe even a little bit cheesy) to becoming retro cool, or even just plain cool again? Does it depend upon the intrinsic qualities of the item, or is the mere passage of time sufficient to invest the desired mystique?

Is twenty years long enough for the cycle?

I hope, over the course of this month, to answer some of these deep philosophical questions…through the medium of the latest round of the Cookbook Challenge.

Because this month’s selection, published at the height of late ‘80s cheesitude, and with the goofy graphic design and recipes from half-forgotten celebrities to prove it, is the late, great ("Not the face!") Dom DeLuise’s Eat This…It’ll Make You Feel Better!

Full disclosure: when this came up as my selection for the month, I seriously considered cheating. I was really hoping for one of the beguiling Australian cookbooks I have bought over the past few months but not yet dipped into properly, or maybe something that would help me produce some hearty winter veggie food. This seemed so…unhip.

But, if I’m going to be absolutely honest, I also have to disclose that I bought this cookbook for myself, when I was starting to focus on cooking, because I was hoping to get hold of some quantified versions of southern Italian classics (as opposed to my mother and grandmother’s method: “Throw this stuff in a pot. No, I don’t know exactly how much. Cook it until it looks done. It’ll be delicious.” Which of course it always is—when they do it). And if you’re looking for hearty, filling, minimally meaty fare, southern Italian cucina povera isn’t a bad place to start.

So, what have you got in your cookbook collection that you’re maybe a little embarrassed to own up to? Wouldn’t you like to take the Cookbook Challenge this month and find out if it’s worth its bookshelf real estate?

A quick refresher on how the Cookbook Challenge works:

1. Count up the number of cookbooks you have. (Include magazines, clipping binders, electronic folders—whatever you’ve got that you want to explore further.)
2. When you’ve got a total, pick a number between one and that total. (Better yet, if you can, have someone else do it for you, to ensure that it’s really random.)
3. Count through your cookbooks until you get to that number, and pull out the randomly selected cookbook, magazine, folder, etc. (You could also pull names out of a hat if you want to really get serious, but this is quicker.)
4. Commit to cooking at least one new recipe from that resource in the next month. Five, if you want to really challenge yourself.
5. Tell about what you discovered—send me an email, post about it yourself, comment here. Did you discover a new favorite? Or is this cookbook just a pretty face with nothing in it you can see yourself cooking?

As for me, I’m going back to the ‘80s, and will report on what I find in the kitchen there. I will not, however, be coming back wearing skinny jeans, an oversized top, and a giant belt, even if everyone else suddenly thinks this is a good idea again. I’ve already been there once, and once was enough.

The verdict

Today, to wrap up the second edition of the Cookbook Challenge: haiku!

Domestic Goddess

Earns spot on this baker's shelf
Full of tasty treats

Oh, and (appropriately enough), Happy Birthday to the sugar-lovingest member of my family--brother/uncle L. Wish I could be there to bake you up something sweet!

Bona fide

I have been told by many people that it is not possible to get a decent bagel outside of New York City. Or Montreal.

(Not by the same people. In fact, I would hesitate to put the New-York-bagel people and the Montreal-bagel people in a room with my favorite breakable items and then mention the word “bagel”. I think they’re even worse than the New-England-clam-chowder people and the Manhattan-clam-chowder people.

Not that anything with tomatoes in it can be called “chowder”.

But I digress.)

This takes in a lot of territory, and I haven’t eaten enough bagels in enough places to go that far. I will say that, in my experience, real bagels (as opposed to bread rolls that are just shaped like bagels) are pretty damn difficult to find in either Oxford or Canberra.

Since Nigella Lawson apparently has the same problem in London (she probably doesn’t spend much time in the East End, where there actually are real bagels; I never did either), she has thoughtfully provided a recipe for homemade bagels in HtbaDG, which I have selected for Cookbook Challenge Recipe #4.

NL's DIY Bagels
These quantities are half of the NL recipe. Also, I double-checked Under the High Chair’s bagel recipe for some aspects of the method.

500g/1lb+ strong, plain, or all-purpose flour
1.5tsp salt
3.5g/1tsp yeast
1Tbsp sugar
1.5tsp oil
250ml/10oz very warm water*

2Tbsp sugar for poaching the bagels

Grease a clean bowl and set aside.

Mix the flour, salt, and yeast together in a large bowl. Mix the sugar, oil, and water in a jug. Pour wet into dry and mix with a dough whisk, wooden spoon, or implement of your choice. When dough has cohered sufficiently (it will be very stiff), knead with your hands until you have a smooth, springy dough—this will take about 10 minutes of hard kneading.

Place the dough in oiled bowl, turning to coat with the oil. Cover bowl with clingfilm/plastic wrap and leave to rise for about one hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.

When the dough has risen, punch it down, knead it a little more, then cut up into six equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, and leave to rest for about five minutes. Meanwhile, grease a baking tray**, put a large pot of water on the stove to boil, and turn your oven up as high as it will go.

When the balls have had their rest, take one and poke a hole in the middle of it with your thumbs. Shape as best you can into a smooth, even bagel shape***, then proceed to the next one. When you have formed all of them, cover and leave to rise for another 15 minutes or so.

When the water is boiling, add the sugar (this makes the bagels shiny), and drop three of the bagels into it. Poach for about a minute, turning once. (Mine rose to the top, flipping halfway, during this time, so I didn’t really have to do anything.) Fish out with a slotted spoon and place on the baking tray. Repeat with the second three.

When you’re done poaching, bake the bagels in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until they are light brown, shiny, and puffy.

Makes 6 real bagels.


* I don’t think this was quite enough water, because the dough was very stiff. I plan to increase it by about 25ml/1oz next time.
** Even with greasing, the bagels still stuck. Next time I might try parchment instead.
*** As you can see from the picture, I couldn’t get my bagels very smooth because of how stiff the dough was. So I’ve decided they have character.

Pucker up

As you may have gathered from the name of this blog, I am very partial to lemons. The most useful of kitchen staples, they can be used in either sweet or savory foods. They can add a subtle sparkle to the background of almost any dish, or hold their own as the starring flavor. I may not go so far as my friend SC, whom I have witnessed eating whole lemon slices from her drink, peel and all, but short of such demonstrations of unconditional love I am among the lemon’s greatest admirers, and aim always to have some on hand.

Unfortunately, my housemates do not share my adoration of all things lemon. Miss B, despite her love of pickles and salty things, has not (yet) embraced the full spectrum of the sour palate, while DP thinks we’re both nuts and sits firmly in the sweet tooth camp. So when I recently developed a craving for lemon poppyseed cake, I knew I’d have to get creative about finding someone to share it with me, or else end up eating the whole thing myself. I took the advice of another cake-baking friend, and carted it off to my weekly parents’ coffee morning. A genius suggestion—I got enough to satisfy my own cravings, and had the added satisfaction of making a host of other lemon- (or just cake-) lovers happy. There was even enough left to take home for a photo shoot, which I had forgotten to do beforehand. Win-win-win.

(Bonus comment: “Isn’t it unusual for Americans to bake?”)

NL's Mother-in-Law’s Madeira Cake
Aka Cookbook Challenge Recipe #3. This is a variation on the very first recipe in HtbaDG, described as “baking at its simplest and most elegant….[O]ne of those plain cakes you think you can’t see the point of, until you start slicing and eating it.” It is delicious as is (although not quite up to the standard of the Ukrainian Poppyseed Cake in the Moosewood Cookbook), and would also make a great dessert topped with fresh berries and whipped cream.

240g/10oz unsalted butter at room temperature
200g/8oz caster/granulated sugar, plus extra for topping
zest of 1 and juice of 1.5 lemons
3 eggs
210g/8oz self-raising flour*
90g/4oz plain flour
2 Tbsp poppyseeds

Preheat the oven to 170C/350F. Grease a loaf pan and line with baking parchment.

Cream the butter and sugar. Chop the lemon zest very finely and add. Mix the eggs in one at a time, adding a tablespoon of flour each time. Mix in the remainder of the flour, followed by the lemon juice and poppyseeds. Spread in baking pan and sprinkle extra sugar over. Bake for 50-60 minutes; let cool in the tin.

* I didn’t have self-raising flour, so I used all plain flour and added two teaspoons of baking powder.

Pack rat

This recipe is the best reason I can think of for never getting rid of a cookbook ever.*

I bought How to be a Domestic Goddess more than seven years ago. At the time, I had a job that required me to travel an average of two weeks out of every four, and that was when my cookbook collection (not to say problem) really started. I had just moved back to the US, but was often either in the UK on these trips, or else passing through en route to somewhere else. I started picking up cookbooks here and there, reading them as though they were novels as a way to assuage my homesickness and mitigate night after night of eating alone in restaurants. This was one of the first ones I bought, and for me it exemplifies what Laurie Colwin said about cookbooks: that they are distillations of domestic life at a particular place and time. And very comforting at a time when domesticity of any kind was in short supply.

Even though I’ve pored over this cookbook numerous times over the years, I’m not sure I had ever cooked a single thing from it before this month. But I’ve been wanting to make this recipe ever since the first time I cracked the spine; in fact, as soon as I chose it for the Cookbook Challenge, I thought, “Now I’m finally going to make that bacon and egg pie.”

* In the mental health field, this is known as rationalization—finding post hoc reasons to justify otherwise inexplicable actions.


NL's Boxing Day Egg-and-Bacon Pie
So called because it is NL's preferred Boxing Day supper; obviously you don't have to wait until then to make it. I fiddled with the filling proportions, as the original recipe was practically all bacon and hardly any egg. It was delicious like this, but next time I make it, I might lower the bacon by another 100g and add yet another egg.

Pastry
I used this recipe for Anxiety-Free Piecrust; or substitute your own favorite

Filling
400g/1lb (streaky) bacon, cut into thin strips
1 medium onion, chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
1 scallion, chopped
2 Tbsp chopped basil**
3 large eggs

Make the pastry ahead of time, so it’s had time to rest by the time you are ready to put the pie together.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Fry the bacon and onion together, seasoning liberally with pepper. Mix the remaining ingredients together thoroughly and set aside.

Roll out both halves of the pastry dough to fit your pie dish of choice; line the dish with one, and set the other aside. Dump the bacon and onions into the pie shell, then pour over the egg mixture. Cover with the pastry lid, trim both, and fold over and pinch the overhang to seal the pie. Cut steam vents in the top and bake for 30 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack. NL recommends serving it cold or about room temperature, but we ate it hot and it was good that way too.

Serves 6.

** The original recipe called for parsley, but I’m not a big parsley fan and I never have any on hand. I do, however, have three basil plants on my balcony.

Self knowledge

You know, I aspire to being a domestic goddess. I dream of being serene and unflappable, producing one culinary masterpiece after another, always prepared with a fully stocked (not to mention spotlessly clean and precisely organized) kitchen. But I think I’m going to have to accept that it’s just not going to happen.

Take this weekend. I had already planned my first Cookbook Challenge recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess: cupcakes, as requested by Miss B. I had checked the ingredients list. I had taken the butter out of the fridge ahead of time to soften. I had even been in the supermarket on Saturday afternoon to pick up a few staples.

And yet, at five-thirty on Saturday evening, when dinner preparations were already in full swing and it was time to frost the cupcakes, I discovered that I had somehow managed to forget to buy icing (confectioners’) sugar. Which we had probably been out of since January, the last time I remember making frosting.

I will spare you the details of the short-lived but hideously unsuccessful (and potentially dangerous) attempt to make frosting using melted caster (granulated) sugar that followed this discovery. Suffice to say that Miss B and I, who clearly have no self-restraint, ate unfrosted cupcakes for dessert on Saturday night. DP, who has more exacting standards, held out until Sunday lunchtime when he could have his cupcake as it should be—dripping with gooey chocolate frosting.

It is worth noting that, even without frosting, these cupcakes are so good that a four-year-old who normally ignores the cake part altogether was eating bits off the paper liner by the end.

Pepsi-Cola Cupcakes*
* Anyone who is familiar with Ms. Lawson knows that she is, albeit reluctantly, the “Coca-Cola cooking queen of Europe”. Anyone who is familiar with me knows that we don’t keep no stinkin’ Coke in my house.

Cupcakes
200g/8oz plain/all-purpose flour
250g/10oz caster/granulated sugar
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda/baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 large egg
125ml/5oz buttermilk (or 30g/10z yogurt mixed with 100ml/4oz semi-skimmed milk)**
1 tsp vanilla extract
125g/5oz unsalted butter
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
175ml/7oz Pepsi

Frosting
2 Tbsp butter, softened***
3 Tbsp Pepsi
1 Tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
225g/9oz icing/confectioners' sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Line a 12-cup cupcake pan.

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Heat the butter, cocoa, and Pepsi on the stove until the butter is melted and stir to combine. Mix the egg, dairy, and vanilla together. Add first the butter mixture, and then the egg mixture, to the dry ingredients and beat to combine. Pour into cupcake pans and bake until a tester comes out clean.****

To make the frosting, mix the Pepsi, cocoa, and vanilla into the butter. Sift or whisk the sugar to get rid of any lumps, then beat into the butter mixture until you have a thick, smooth, but still runny frosting. Spread on the cupcakes. Sprinkle with hundreds and thousands if so inclined.

** I used 30g Greek yogurt and 100ml full milk—worked great.
*** NL specifies melting the butter to make the frosting, but I thought that would make it too runny, so I didn't. As you can see, it's pretty runny as it is.
**** I cooked mine for between 30 and 40 minutes, which seemed like a lot for cupcakes, but they weren't dried out. Quite the opposite, in fact; I still wasn't sure if they were cooked, even after all that time.

April Fool

I thought briefly about constructing some elaborate blog-related hoax for today, in honor of April Fool’s. Then I remembered that I’m not Jim Halpert and that practical jokes are not my forte.

It’s just as well, because at the moment I seem to be on the receiving end of a practical joke being played by my ISP, where they cut off my service at home, give me a different reason every time I call tech support, make me pay to find out that their equipment is (possibly) at fault, and then force me to wait four days while they ship a replacement (which may or may not fix the problem), instead of letting me walk 10 minutes down the road to pick up a replacement myself.

This reminds me of why I’ve never really liked practical jokes: the person they’re played on rarely considers them amusing. But I have no doubt that my ISP, telecom monopoly though it may be, appreciates the simple joys in life and finds the whole thing side-splittingly hilarious.

So, as usual when life gets to me, I’m distracting myself with cooking. And with all this extra time that I can’t spend, say, doing my job, what better activity to engage in than another round of the Cookbook Challenge?

Regular readers may remember the first round, from December of last year. If you’re new, the rules are simple, and designed for anyone who owns more than one cookbook:

1. Count up the number of cookbooks you have. (Include magazines, clipping binders, electronic folders—whatever you’ve got that you want to explore further.)
2. When you’ve got a total, pick a number between one and, say, 50. (Better yet, if you can, have someone else do it for you, to ensure that it’s really random.)
3. Count through your cookbooks until you get to that number, and pull out the randomly selected cookbook, magazine, folder, etc. (You could also pull names out of a hat if you want to really get serious, but this is quicker.)
4. Commit to cooking at least one new recipe from that resource in the next month. Five, if you want to really challenge yourself.
5. Tell about what you discovered—send me an email, post about it yourself, comment here (I'll report back on what I found). Did you discover a new favorite? Or is this cookbook just a pretty face with nothing in it you can see yourself cooking?

I've already made my selection: Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking. Perfect for the coming of autumn to Canberra: more reasons to turn on the oven and whip up something tasty!

So come on: even if you’re not in the throes of computer despair like me, you may be trying to shake off the northern winter doldrums, or looking forward to cooler weather cooking after a hot southern hemisphere summer, or getting ready to host a big event for Easter or Passover. Join in and look for buried treasure in your own recipe library!

Challenge wrap-up

Happy New Year! And for my first post, I’m going to wrap up some business from last year—Roving Lemon’s Cookbook Challenge.

Following Challenge rules, I randomly chose Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food (350 Recipes Ready-To-Eat in 30 Minutes). I managed to post about one recipe; I also made two others, both involving chicken (Chicken Marsala and Mozzarella Chicken with Pesto Gravy). Neither one knocked my socks off, so I won’t post the details. If you’re really dying to know, tell me. I didn’t quite make it to five recipes (the full Challenge), as holiday madness overtook me.

My verdict on this cookbook: lots of interesting flavor combinations, but most of them I’d end up eating on my own. I’m moderately experimental, DP is a lot less so, and Miss B is four. (I hear there are four-year-old omnivores out there, but I have yet to meet one.)

My lovely friends over at StephenChristinelicious also took up the Challenge, and posted on their blog about the books and new recipes they chose. Any other reports? Now’s your chance! And if you wanted to participate, but couldn’t, watch this space; I’m already contemplating the next round.

Which just leaves one final question for my fellow cookbook junkies to weigh in on: now that I’ve thoroughly evaluated this cookbook, should I extract my keeper recipes and (gasp!) give it away?