IHCC Nigel Slater summary

Slater's cookbooks have been favorites since I picked up Real Fast Food on a sale table. I love the way many of his recipes are more like suggestions of what you can do. I also like that his recipes are frequently for two, so there's no need for scaling back. So, I was eager to do the I Heart Cooking Clubs Nigel Slater challenge. I started off well, but lost the oomph to do the special posts near the end, even when I had made the meal. Oh well. Even so, I actually cooked more with Slater during this time than I posted.

I've reshelved my Slater books now (the challenge books tend to sit out on the table while the challenge is in progress), but now find there's no longer room for them. The 30-Minute Cook that I got just before this challenge started has no place. And I've got three more of his books on order, Kitchen Diaries II, and Tender I and II. Where will they go? My cookbook space is really being stressed out right now.

My Slater books 

• 30MinCook: The 30-Minute Cook, by Nigel Slater (ISBN 9780141029528). This is my newest Slater book and a real winner. [8 recipes]
• Diaries: The Kitchen Diaries, by Nigel Slater (ISBN 9780007241156). A wonderful read and full of delicious recipes. Worth the price for the slow-roasted lamb leg that I've done twice now, but didn't include in these posts. [5 recipes]
• FastPuds: Real Fast Puddings, by Nigel Slater (ISBN 9780141029511). Haven't found that much interesting here (we're not really dessert people), but loved the one I made [1 recipe]
• RealCook: Real Cooking, by Nigel Slater) (ISBN 0140252770). Not my most used of Slater's books, but still good. [2 recipes]
• RealFast: Real Fast Food, by Nigel Slater (ISBN 0879516429), cookbooker. My first Slater book, bought on spec from a sale table. [4 recipes]

Recipes I tried 

Post	Recipe	Book, page	Rating (1-3)
Post	Lamb Sirloin Chops with Yogurt and Mint very good	RealFast, p240	+++
	Fragrant Brown Basmati Rice less successful, slightly odd instruction, try again	RealFast, p203	+
Post	Herbed Salmon with Garlic Cream Sauce very good and easy	30MinCook, p118	+++
	Lamb Hash simply and good, tasty with the simples of seasonings	30MinCook, p179	+++
	Lamb in Spiced Gravy a yummy, Indian-ish way for leftovers	30MinCook, p179	+++
Post	Chicken and Rice Salad tasty, vaguely Asian chicken salad	Diaries, p187	+++
Post	Broiled Potatoes cheesed up for a main, or a nice side	RealFast, p173	+++
Post	Grilled Fish with Chermoula yummy fast fish	30MinCook, p124	+++
Post	Pancetta and Blue Cheese Risotto good risotto	RealCook, p169	+++
Post	Shepherd's Pie with Spiced Parsnip Mash very good variation on shepherd's pie	RealCook p119	+++
Post	Escalope of Pork with Asparagus and Cheese delicious	30MinCook, pxx	+++
Post	A Shrimp Omelette with potted shrimp	Diaries, p195	+++
Post	Chicken Livers with Vinegar and Onions something to try again with proper chicken livers	30MinCook, p201	+++
Post	Fusilli with Olives, Anchovies, and Capers more yummy pasta	RealFast, p119	+++
Post	Goat's Cheese and Olive Aubergines nice starter	30MinCook, p33	+++
Post	Pork Chops, Mustard Sauce good with and without the chopped cornichons	Diaries, p51	+++
Post	Goat's Cheese and Fruit starter or dessert?	30MinCook, p92	++
	A Refreshing Salad for a Hot Day as it says	Diaries, p231	+++
Post	Chocolate Almonds oh my	FastPuds, p133	+++
Post	Lemon and Basil Linguine lemony deliciousness	Diaries, p130	+++

IHCC: Zest It up!

This week it's zingy citrus week at I Heart Cooking Clubs. And was also pasta time at home. Result: Lemon and Basil Linguine from The Kitchen Diaries (p130), another Slater recipe that's quick and about as simple as it can be.

For two, simply whisk together the juice of a big lemon, 75ml of olive oil, and 75g of grated Parmesan. When that's well-combined, thick and grainy looking, stir in some torn up basil leaves and lots of freshly ground black pepper. This is really quick to put together, but grating that much Parmesan does take a bit of time—even with my wonderful microplane. (And I used only about 50-60ml of olive oil, since that seemed like entirely too much.) When the pasta is done, drain it, toss with the sauce, and serve. That's all there is to it.

OK, it took a bit longer for me because I made some lemon fettuccine from scratch rather use using store-bought.

The first taste (or smell) is heavy on the citrus, but the lemon, cheese, and basil complement each other so well, making a really creamy sauce without any cream.

Check this week's post at I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what zesty treats others have cooked up.

IHCC: Moreish Meals!

This week's theme at I Heart Cooking Clubs is Moreish Meals, something worth coming back to for seconds. And thirds. And fourths.

Cooking time was a bit limited this week and it seemed like time to make something sweetly moreish, so I had a quick look at Real Fast Puddings, a Nigel Slater book I've not really used before.

In the Spring section, I found a recipe for Chocolate Almonds (p133). Exactly why this is a spring recipe, I'm not sure, but I had the ingredients on-hand and a bit of time one evening, so it seemed like a go.

These are really simple to make, if a bit tedious. Melt some chocolate in a double boiler, either real or improvised. Toast some unskinned  almonds in a skillet till them smell good. Sprinkle a good bit of cocoa powder on some waxed paper. When the chocolate has melted, stir in the almonds. Then use a small spoon to lift them out one by one (says Slater, but I did them in groups of three to five, please don't tell him!), roll them in cocoa, and set aside to cool.

My 200g sack of almonds and a 100g bar of chocoate made enough nibbles to fill an old peanut butter jar.

The DH said he'd try just one, but he didn't manage that. He also very nicely said that these would give some competition to our local chocolatières. Well, they are pretty good.

Visit the latest post a I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what moreish foods other folks have been making.

IHCC: Serving Up Salads!

This week it's salad time with Nigel Slater and it's definitely salad weather outside. Being a bundle of indecision, I ended up making two Slater salads this week.

The first one was Goat's Cheese and Fruit from The 30-Minute Cook (p92). This is a salad of fresh fruits, with a dressing of balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, and walnut oil, topped by a crottin melted on a toasted baguette slice. Red currants and raspberries were the best looking fresh fruit at the shop this week, so I used that combination. This was good, but a bit odd. Should it be a salad starter or a combined cheese-dessert course? We both liked the bits individually, but thought the combination was odd. Maybe it would work better with autumny fruits like pears and figs, but there's still the question of what course it should be. Odd or not, we enjoyed it.

This evening we had A Refreshing Salad for a Hot Day, the July 19 entry from The Kitchen Diaries (p231). Well, sort of. Slater asks for a cantaloupe; I got a charentaise melon. (I live in the Charente, so this is local food here. Cantaloupes are rare.) Instead of Parma ham, I used slices from a dried French ham that a neighbor won in a lottery, but didn't want. There was no arugula/rocket in the shop so I used some leaves from a garden lettuce that is bolting. All served with a simple dressing of lemon juice and olive oil with salt and pepper. Only when I went back to the kitchen to see if the main course was ready to come out of the oven did I realize that I'd neglected to add the mozzarella slices to the salad. So we used those to wipe up the bit of dressing left on our plates. The mozzarella was good by itself, and probably better if I'd managed to actually include it in the salad.

Last week I didn't post my dish, but you can see what other folks made Off the Spice Rack at I Heart Cooking Clubs. And be sure to check out what folks are doing for Serving Up Salads this week. 

IHCC: July Potluck!!!

Recently I had a hankering for some pork chops, but none were in the freezer. The next time at the grocery, I found a big package of them on special and froze them up individually, waiting for a pork chop night to come along.

Pork chops have never been my forté. Strangely it's Ed, who barely cooks at all, who can fry up a mean chop. In the past I've let him do the honors whenever pork chop time rolls around. For this dinner, I was determined to have a go myself. Since it's potluck week, I looked through my cookbooks for all the I Heart Cooking Club authors and settled on ... yes, it's Nigel Slater again.

Slater's books are certainly spending a lot of time in our kitchen this season. Pork Chops, Mustard Sauce is the 13 February entry in The Kitchen Diaries (p51), a classic sort of way to embellish pork.

Start by putting a bit of butter and olive oil in a skillet and set it over a highish flame while you salt and pepper the chops and squash a couple of garlic cloves. When the fat starts to foam up, plop in the garlic and the chops. Brown the chops on the first side, then turn them over. Brown the second side, then turn the heat down to medium. Let the chops cook through (no pink should show when you peek with a knife), turning them once. Move the chops to plates or a serving dish and keep them warm. (I left my plates on the plate warmer and covered them loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil.)

Now comes the sauce that makes this dish especially nice. Pour off most of the fat, leaving the tasty bits in the pan. Turn the heat back up and deglaze the pan with a good slog of white wine, scraping up the browned bits to help it all dissolve. Add some cream and let it bubble a bit. Stir in big spoonfuls of Dijon mustard and a grainy mustard. Add some chopped cornichons. (I forgot this bit!) Taste for salt  and grind in some black pepper. You might add a dribble of the cornichon juice if you think it's needed to sharpen the taste. Serve the shops topped with the sauce and a pile of smashed potatoes so none of the sauce goes to waste. Pork chop success—maybe I'm starting to get the hand of this pork chop thing!

I forgot to add the chopped cornichons, so I'll definitely plan this in again to give that a try. A bit of acid is often a nice touch to cut the fatty feel of creamy foods.

Last week I forgot to take a picture of my "Around the Globe" dish, but you can see other well-travelled posts at I Heart Cooking Clubs. Check  out this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what other folks have turned up for their potluck meals.

IHCC: Starters & Nibbles

Starters and nibbles this week. Nibbles I'm not so good at, but starters are always nice. I often try to follow the French still of meal planning where you have a starter, a main, and an after, either cheese or sweet. This doesn't work all the time, but it's a pattern I try to keep in mind.

A browse through my Slater books turned up Goat's Cheese and Olive Aubergines in The 30-Minute Cook (p33). This is meant as a main dish for two, where you each get a whole eggplant to yourself. I scaled it back so I could serve it as a starter.

Since I needed just two thickish slices of eggplant, rather than frying then, I just brushed on a bit of olive oil and cooked them under the broiler. They ended up with quite nice grill marks which are invisible in the finished dish. Once the slices are done, you simply spread on a thick layer of green tapenade, top with a bit of goat cheese (I used little rounds of cabécou), sprinkle with a bit of Parmesan, and pop them back under the broiler till the cheese is nicely melted. Serve warm.

Only after I scaled the recipe back did I realize this is very similar to a recipe that I picked up from a French cooking magazine for a munchy that can be served with your aperitif or as a starter. That uses artichoke bottoms, either fresh (eh) or frozen (yes!), instead of the eggplant. This is a nice variation, since it can be easily picked up with the fingers for munching. An artichoke bottom is less floppy than a slice of cooked eggplant. I've done this with both green and black tapenade, and prefer the green for the less assertive taste in this case.

Check out this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what kind of nibbling other folk are up to.

IHCC: Mediterranean Magic!

Ah, a Mediterranean dinner. For a long time, our favorite restaurant in Amsterdam for pre-concert dining was Mediterranean. One day I called to reserve only to find that they'd transformed into a French-ish steak-frites place. Mediterranean was passé, they said. Trendy or passé, foods from this area still provide some of our favorite flavors. And Nigel Slater frequently seems to agree.

Tonight's dinner was was a really simple one and one I'll do again, no doubt, since all the ingredients are usually on-hand from the pantry, the fridge, or the freezer. I made Fusilli with Olives, Anchovies, and Capers from Real Fast Food (p119). The sauce could hardly be easier. You chop up some black olive and anchovy fillets, slice some sun-dried tomatoes (I used oven-dried ones from the freezer), stir in some capers and warm it all in some olive oil. You can get the sauce and a salad ready ready while the pasta water is coming to a boil, then finish off the sauce while it cooks.

There is a small problem (I think) in the recipe as printed. It calls for "1 pound fresh or 4 ounces dried pasta" for two servings. I think most recipes call for four ounces of pasta per person. I usually make six to seven ounces for two. For this sauce, though, I think the full eight ounces for two would have been better. One, there would have been more for each of us (we liked it!) and, two, the sauce has strong flavors, so more pasta would balance it off better.

I used cascareccia instead of fusilli. Slater also suggests penne as an alternative. I'm thinking that some nice homemade fettuccine might work also.

Stop by I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what Mediterranean treats other folks are making this week.

IHCC: June Potluck!

And now for something completely different. My potluck this month isn't Nigel Slater. And it's not Madhur Jaffrey. Instead it's Mark Bittman, from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, a rather good vegetarian cookbook I don't turn to often enough.

There was broccoli to be used up, so I decided to make some Creamy Cauliflower (or Broccoli) Soup (p130). I've previously made the Indian Cauliflower Soup variation and I thought I'd give the main recipe a try.

First I needed some vegetable stock. I made a double-dose of One-Hour Vegetable Stock (p101) so I'd have extra for the freezer. This is a fairly straightforward stock to make and the result had quite a lot flavor. (Vegetable stocks are frequently pretty blah tasting.) You spend a bit of time chopping carrots, onion, potato, celery, garlic, and mushrooms. These are sautéed until they begin to brown. Then water is added along with some soy sauce, parsley, and freshly ground black pepper. I measured a bit short on the soy sauce (it was the end of the bottle) and added no extra salt. This simmers for 30 minutes or longer, till you're ready to deal with it. I used some for the soup then froze another five cups.

With the stock ready, the soup was then a snap to make. I heated some grapeseed oil (currently my sautéing choice, rather than butter or olive oil), then added a sliced onion, a chopped head of broccoli, and some chopped garlic as they were ready. Add a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper. When the onion has softened, stir in a good slog of white wine. (Feels like making a risotto!) Then add the stock and cook until the broccoli is tender. Use an immersion blender to buzz it smooth. Stir in a cup of cream or sour cream (I used crème fraîche) and serve. Not the prettiest soup I've ever made, but tasty nevertheless.

Check out this week's post at I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what potluck dishes other folks are making this week.

IHCC: Budget-Friendly Dishes

There wasn't that much time this week to wander around looking for budget-friendly recipes. I did remember, though, that chicken livers were a significantly cheap menu item (about €1 for a tub that's more than enough for two people). I'm not actually a chicken liver fan, but DH loves them and I indulge him periodically.

In The 30-Minute Cook (which is currently my go-to book for those what-on-earth-am-I-going-to-cook-tonight moments), Slater has a section on chicken livers, with several good ideas. The recipe I chose was Chicken Livers with Vinegar and Onions (p201), which is a speeded-up version of a recipe of the same name from Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of Southwest France.

A problem was that I had no chicken livers in the freezer and there were none to be found at our primary grocery this week (both gizzards and hearts, gésiers et coeurs, were there aplenty). Today I asked DH to stop at another grocery following his choir practice to see if they had some livers. But I neglected to specify raw livers. He returned late, bringing a packet of ready-cooked livers in duck fat, making my theoretically cheap dinner somewhat more expensive at €2.50. So some quick changes were needed.

You start by slicing two onions thin, then sautéing them for 15 minutes in butter and olive oil until they're soft. (Since my livers came complete with duck fat, I reduced the butter here as much as I could.) Then add some chopped anchovies and sauté a bit longer. (In my rush, I forgot this step, but think it would make a nice addition. We're neither of us anchovy fans, but melted into a sauce like this they add a nice depth of taste. After the fishy smell has gone out the exhaust fan.)

Meanwhile, toss the livers with flour and sauté them in butter till golden on each side. I skipped this step and just added the livers, remvoing as much fat as possible, to the onions. Red wine vinegar is used to deglaze the chicken-liver-frying pan. After the livers were warm, I pushed them and the onions to one side and deglazed that pan, although there wasn't really much to deglaze. Finish the sauce with a knob of butter (I skipped this) and season with salt and pepper.

Slater suggests topping with a bit of chopped parsley and serving with toasted French bread. I used toasted French ciabattas. Does that count?

If I'd had raw chicken livers, this would have been a significantly cheap and tasty meal. Onions, butter, olive oil, flour, even parsley and anchovies, these are all found in the larder and add relatively little to the cost. Maybe it would have been €2 for the dish, plus another €2 perhaps for the ciabattas. (Yes, they're expensive, but they keep well in the freezer for when we're out of bread.)

I've added Wolfert's recipe to my short list, since I'm curious to see how this should really taste. Wolfert suggests serving this either a main or a starter.

Check this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs post to see how other people are being good to their budget.

IHCC: Let's do Brunch!

Thumbing through my Nigel Slater books and wondering what I could find that would be considered a dish for brunch, I came upon the June 15th entry in The Kitchen Diaries (p195) titled "A shrimp omelette." The whole entry for the date reads:

You can make a very nice little omelette by folding in a carton of potted shrimps, minus the butter topping, as it cooks. It is surprisingly filling and somehow, with a glass of white wine, rather decadent.

Ah-ha, I thought, an omelet sounds brunchlike and I need a light and quick dinner one evening. Potted shrimp, however, are not something I can get at my local grocery. A little searching around turned up a recipe at the River Cottage site, also from their Edible Seashore handbook (which I don't have). Potted shrimp are tiny shrimp that have been cooked in lots of clarified butter (I used ghee) and some herbs (mace, cayenne, and bay leaf), then plopped in a jar or carton and topped with a layer of plain, clarified butter. I couldn't find the teeninsy brown shrimp asked, but got some teeny regular shrimp that had been cooked and frozen. Once you've got the potted shrimp on hand, it's just a matter of making and omelet and filling it with the shrimp. Served with a salad, this was a fine, light meal, well-suited to brunch-time eating.

Check this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs post to see what other folks have found to eat for brunch.

IHCC: Veg Out!

We have a visitor this week who isn't really keen on eating his vegetables, so I try a bit to make them a featured part of our meals. In The 30-Minute Cook, I found Escalope of Pork with Asparagus and Cheese, which sounded especially promising because I recently bought some pork scallops on sale and they were in the freezer wanting to be used.

Slater apparently has a soft spot for canned asparagus, which I find pretty disgusting. I couldn't see what the big deal was about asparagus until I was served some fresh from the garden. There's a world of difference, and all for the better. This week at the shop there were only white asparagus. We usually prefer green and they would certainly make this a more colorful dish.

The pork scallops are beaten out to about 1/4" (if they're not already that thin), then dipped in flour and fried in olive oil and butter for a few minutes on each side. They're then laid on a baking sheet, topped with the asparagus (canned ones drained or fresh ones steamed) and some grated cheese (your choice—I used comté, which I usually have in the freezer), then popped under the grill for a few minutes. While the cheese in melting, make a bit of pan sauce by deglazing the pan with Marsala. (I didn't have any so used the evening's red wine.)

I didn't have as much cheese as Slater asks, but it was more than enough. He definitely likes his cheese.

Check this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what veggie treats other folks are cooking up.

IHCC: May Potluck!

What's this? It's time for a potluck and it's not Madhur Jaffrey? No, it's Nigel Slater this time around. I've really been cooking a lot from his books of late. A few days ago, I made (for the second time) Slow-Roast Lamb from The Kitchen Diaries. Since then we've been eating bits of lamb and there's at least one more meal in the freezer. Meanwhile we used a goodly portion of the leg for Shepherd's Pie with Spiced Parsnip Mash from Real Cooking (p119).

This is a nice variation on a plain shepherd's pie. The topping is parsnips (there were some leftover potatoes, too) mashed with sautéed onions and warm spices—ground cumin, ground coriander, garam masala, butter, salt, and pepper.

For the filling, chopped leeks and carrots are slowly sautéed in drippings or butter. Sliced mushrooms are added, followed by chopped lamb. (You could, of course, use raw ground lamb, but a shepherd's pie is traditionally made with leftovers.) When the lamb is cooked and bits of brown appear, stir in some flour and a bit of tomato purée. Add stock (a bit of leftover sauce from the lamb roast was supplemented with chicken stock from the freezer), a bay leaf, and some sprigs of thyme if you've got it. Simmer for a good long while. ("The mixture should not really bubble, just occasionally 'bloop' at you'," writes Slater.) Somewhere along the way, season with salt and pepper, and a tablespoon or so of Worcestershire sauce.

Pour the meat mixture into a casserole, spoon the topping over it all, and bake the top is golden and browning on the peaks.

This recipe is supposed to serve four generously. Three of us ate it all. Very more-ish it was. Even though we had a starter, we still ate it all. The sweetish parsnips made a good topping, but sweet potatoes might work just as well.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what other folks are making for their potluck meal.

IHCC: A Little Cheese, PLEASE!

This week's I Heart Cooking Clubs has a cheesy theme and I found a promising idea in Real Cooking, Pancetta and Blue Cheese Risotto (p169). Lots of good things here, creamy risotto, pancetta, blue cheese.

For the pancetta, a cooking friend who is visiting and I cut meat off a jambon sec (dried ham) that was recently donated to my kitchen. It's not the Spanish kind, but a local French one. The gadget for supporting the ham is a bit pricey for something I'm not likely to use again, so we struggled to hold it firm, cut off the skin , and make some fine slices for our melon and ham starter and some thicker bits to serve as pancetta. Then we put the ham back in its cheesecloth sack and hung it from the ceiling to be further attacked another day.

Slater's recipe calls for about 2 tablespoons of butter to soften the onion and pancetta and another walnut-sized lump to finish the risotto. This seemed like altogether too much butter, not to mention unnecessary. I used less olive oil for the sautéing and omitted the the finishing walnut altogether.

The start of the risotto is much the same as all risottos. First you soften some flavorful bits in oil, then stir in the rice, then add liquid. Slater suggests adding one-third of the stock at a time; we just did it the standard way, ladleful by ladleful.  When the rice is done, stir in a pile of crumbled blue cheese; I used Fourme d'Ambert, which is our favorite blue cheese right now. Slater suggests about 225g (about 8oz), which seemed too much in the end. This from all the cheese-lovers at table.

The recipe says it's for two. Since we were three at table, I increased the recipe by half. These turned out to be three pretty substantial servings. I think the recipe as stated could serve three people.

The verdict was that this was a good idea for a tasty risotto, especially nice for cool weather. But too much butter in the recipe as written and too much cheese. This didn't, of course, stop us from finishing our plates.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to check out the cheesy wonders contributed by other folks.

IHCC: Weeknight Favorites!

I'm getting the feeling that most everything I try in The 30-Minute Cook will turn into a weeknight favorite. Everything I've tried has been fast, by definition, and tasty. Today was shopping day, which means fish for dinner. This time we had Grilled Fish with Chermoula (p124).

Slater asks for you to cut some white fish fillets into 3cm cubes to marinate, then thread onto skewers for grilling. The best-looking white fish available looked like panga, which is too thin to cut into cubes and skewer. Instead I cut each fillet into half longways. The fish is marinated for as long as you can manage, overnight, a few hours, or even 20 minutes (which is the only option that makes it truly fast). I put my fillets on to marinate just after we got back from the shop, so they had two or three hours of sitting. The final cooking is just a few minutes under the grill.

The chermuoula is easy to assemble but takes a bit of chop-chop-chopping; a small onion, flat-leaf parsley, coriander leaves are mixed with garlic cloves crushed with salt, some powdered saffron, paprika, chili flakes, lemon juice, and olive oil. Toss this with the fish bits and leave them to rest and absorb flavor.

If you have cubes of fish, you could thread them onto skewers. I just put my fillets under the broiler. They got done while I plated the rest of the meal, new potatoes (as suggested) and some haricots jaunes. And very tasty they were.

(I did not line the potatoes up in tidy rows on purpose. They aligned themselves as if by magic.)

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what other folks are making for their weeknight meals.

IHCC: Rootie Patootie!

Back to Real Fast Food for tonight's dinner. Several weeks ago, I ran into the recipe in this book for Broiled Potatoes (p173) and marked it to try since it's always nice to have a new way to do potatoes. When the root veggie them came around, I thought I'd give this a try as a side dish. But, when I read the recipe closer, I discovered the option for making the dish into a light supper by topping the potato slices with a soft blue cheese like Gorgonzola.

When we moved to the Netherlands, thirty-some-odd years ago now, neither of us were big cheese eaters. As American we grew up with Kraft American cheese slices, not an impressive start to our cheese eating careers. Velveeta and similar processed cheeses only made matters worse. Neither of us had a taste for any kind of blue cheese at all, rather we had a sort of antipathy towards them. As we settled into a more European style of life and eating, our cheese vocabulary widened and we enjoyed a much greater variety of cheeses, cow, goat, and sheep. Still, though, blue cheese wasn't really our thing. At some point, though, I figured that so many people whose taste I respected were enthusiastic about blue cheese that I there must be something there I'm missing. I started introducing bits of blue cheese into dinners and cheese plates. Ed remains a bit reluctant, but now I'll even ask for a blue cheese when the trolley comes around in a restaurant.

Slater's Broiled Potatoes start with thick slices of potato, one potato per person, boiled until till done, then scored, topped with garlicky oil, and, yes, broiled. As a side dish, these can be eaten plain or with any number of toppings that Slater suggests. (And I'm sure that two medium potatoes makes a very generous side dish.)

For a supper, he suggests topping the grilled slices with a blue cheese. I found some soft, Italian Gorgonzola to use. When the slices are done, you top with the cheese and put them back under the broiler to melt the cheese. Then serve.

A hit! With a big green salad, this made a lovely dinner. Ed said I could make this one often, just like this.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see how other folks are rooting for Nigel Slater.

IHCC: What's in Your Picnic Basket?

Last week we were eating dinners al fresco. This week we're inside with the heating on again. But we can have a pretend picnic.

A couple of years ago, Santa brought me The Kitchen Diaries and I read Slater's diary throughout the next year, more or less on the same dates. The book ended up with a lot of stickies, and I've been very happy with most of the dishes I've made here.

(Dear Santa, if the paperback edition of Kitchen Diaries II is out this year, I'd really like to find one under the tree. Please.)

An especially nice feature of Slater's books is that he includes lots of recipes for leftovers. One of my do-me-soon stickies in this book was Chicken and Rice Salad (p187). This salad uses the remains of a  roast chicken. (Mine came from the freezer. We often eat half the chicken after roasting, then I pick the meat and freeze that and the carcass—separately, of course.) Fish sauce and sprouts make this salad only vaguely southeast Asian; there's nothing here that would offend non-adventurous eaters.

My grocery here in France rarely carries any kind of sprouts (in contrast to the Netherlands where these were regularly available) and I've been out of the sprouting business for years (although I admit I to thinking sometimes that it might be a good idea to start this up again). There have been sprouts to be had for the last few weeks, so I thought I'd give this recipe a try. But there were no sprouts to be found this week. On the other hand, they did have mangetouts, snow peas, and I thought those would be a good substitute for crunch and flavor.

The base of the salad is rice, sprouts (or snow peas as I made it), and leftover roast chicken. (The 200g of uncooked rice asked could be considered a bit on the much side; a bit less would be fine. Orzo might be a good substitution.) For extra flavor there's some minced red chilies and chopped mint. The dressing is nam pla (fish sauce), lime juice, and olive oil. Toss everything together and serve. It's that easy.

And very easy to eat also. This salad would be great at a picnic or a potluck or on a buffet table, since there's nothing here that would go off.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what other folks have been cooking up for their picnics.

IHCC: April Potluck

This week has been full of Nigel Slater dishes, a potluck spread over several days, thanks to The 30-Minute Cook. This is my newest Slater cookbook and looks like it will be a favorite.

Tuesday was shopping day, which means fish for dinner. Herbed Salmon with Garlic Cream Sauce (p118) was this week's choice. Strips of salmon are rolled in chopped herbs (a mix of tarragon, chervil, dill, parsley, whatever you have) and sautéed in garlic butter. When this fish is done, crème fraîche or some other creamy thing is stirred in to make the sauce. Then a squeeze of lemon to brighten it all.

Could hardly be easier to make and very good to eat. I served the fish with roasted asparagus, the first from our garden, and orzo.

Then I addressed the on-going project of reducing the freezer backlog. This book has a great section on lamb, including things to do with cooked lamb. 

First there was Lamb Hash (p179). You need cooked lamb, shredded, and cooked potatoes, chopped. Fry an onion in drippings or butter, stir in a spoonful of flour, then add the lamb and potatoes with lots of salt and pepper. Pour some stock over it all, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes or so. Stir and simmer a bit more. It's ready to eat when most of the liquid is gone. Ed asked what it was flavored with — nothing but salt and pepper. But good it was.

For the rest of the lamb, there was Lamb in Spiced Gravy (p179 again), a sort of Indian curry-ish dish. There's much more lamb in this than in the hash (350g vs 225g) which actually seemed like too much as i was serving, but nobody complained about the quantity. This again starts with frying an onion in butter; I used grapeseed oil instead to make it a bit lighter on the animal fat. Then add lots of garlic, cayenne, ground coriander, tomatoes (I used puréed tomatoes from last fall's harvest), and stock for a 10-minute simmer. Stir in some sour cream (crème fraîche again) and garam masala, then lay the sliced meat in the sauce to simmer longer.

I served this over basmati rice along with Green beans with Ginger from Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking (p151), which could also be part of the potluck. 

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what other folks have made for this month's potluck.

IHCC: A Welcome Toast to Nigel Slater!

So, I Heart Cooking Clubs is doing Nigel Slater this time around. And what I really don't need right now is yet another cooking project. (This year I started on a big one to read and cook from all the books of the Time-Life Foods of the World series. If you're interested, a few people have joined me in a little Facebook group.) But it's Nigel Slater, for pete's sake, who can resist.

Many years ago I found my first Slater book, Real Fast Food, on a sale table somewhere and picked it up on spec. I didn't know his name, but the book looked liked something I might like and be well worth the 20 guilders I paid for it. It definitely was.

To welcome Slater, I had a look to see what needed to be used in the freezer, found some lamb chops, and found the recipe for Lamb Sirloin Chops with Yogurt and Mint (p240) in my first Slater book. This is vaguely Indian, with the lamb rubbed with a mix of yogurt, garlic, fresh mint leaves, ground cumin, ground coriander, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Not sure if mine were sirloin chops as the recipe asks, but they did quite well. Following some of Slater's accompaniment suggestions, I served the chops with "a cucumber salad dressed with white wine vinegar and chopped fresh dill" (that's the whole recipe) and Fragrant Brown Basmati Rice (p203).

The lamb chops were good, and the same sauce could be used for grilling chunks of lamb on a skewer perhaps. The rice was disappointing, but I'll try it again before I write off the recipe. Interestingly, he has you parboil the rice, then drain it and add it to a pan of fried spices for the final cooking. A bit more complicated than similar recipes. But, he has you toast ground turmeric with whole spices (cloves, cinnamon stick, cardamon pods, and bay leaf), for the same time. I had burnt turmeric before the other spices were smelling brightly. I dumped the contents of the pan, gave it a swipe with a paper towel, then started again. This time I added the ground turmeric with the rice. The final dish had an odd taste, either there were remains of some burnt turmeric or the turmeric really wanted to be toasted for a little bit, just not as long as the whole spices. (The recipe says it serves four. I made a half recipe for two, but it was still too much. I think the recipe as written will serve six.)

I started by getting the lamb chops rubbed with the yogurt sauce and letting them sit to marinate. Then I made the cuke salad, which also didn't complain about a chance to marinate. Then I started the rice. When that was off the fire, I zapped the chops under the broiler. A nice meal, real food, pretty fast, even if the rice was a bit off.

Some people criticize Slater's books because the recipes are a bit vague, sometimes they are only ideas for dishes rather than a finished product. But I find that the whole point of the thing. It's up to me to match the idea with my own experience, taste, and pantry content. I'm looking forward to trying more of these ideas in the coming months.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see how other people have welcomed Nigel Slater to their kitchen.