Supplemental #120

A 100m sprint of a recipe round-up this week.

• Saturday’s Times Magazine housed a set of Le Caprice ‘classics’. You’ve seen it all before. Squid, romesco, chorizo and pardon peppers the most tempting.
• Cute, quick, peanut butter biscuits from Nadiya Hussein.
• In the Weekend sections, six ways to do eggs for brunch. Again, nothing revelatory.
• Really nice pork loin, samphire and cockle recipe by Rose Prince in The Telegraph. The icing to that stellar trio of ingredients being an anchovy and parsley vinaigrette. Other recipes for summer food included polenta with artichokes, and saffron and plum macaroons. Nice.
• Saturday’s Telegraph also declared the dinner party dead. Because, the piece said, these days it’s all about just inviting friends over to dinner in the evening. Next week, Friday night drinks are over, long live drinks in the evening on Fridays, whoop whoop!
• When Stephen Harris is working on a new dish for The Sportsman he asks “would this be on the menu of the restaurant in my dream?” Apparently poached salmon with champagne sauce and wild strawberries would make the grade.
• Tell you what, for you folk embracing that crazy new “friends for dinner but it’s not a dinner party” trend, there were multiple options in Yotam’s Guardian column for food you could cook in advance and serve on a platter or the tray it was cooked in. Including: Swiss chard stuffed with rice and herbs; and a lush polenta, chard and sorrel bake.
• Marianna Leivaditaki’s sweet-spiced grilled quail with aubergine and sheep’s cheese would go down a treat with pals too. My word, her Guardian ‘Cook’ Residency recipes have been lip-smacking.
• Imagine Tommi Miers’ roast courgette, herb, pistachio, apple and giant couscous salad in the middle of your friendly feast that’s completely different to a dinner party.
• Follow that with Claire Ptak’s blueberry pie or crumble cake, before waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a return invite.
• If that never comes, cheer yourself up with Rachel Roddy’s spaghetti vongole. It says it “Serves 4 (or 2 hungry people)”; which I find is usually code for “doable solo, if you don’t pause between mouthfuls”.
• Bit muggy outside? The Honey & Co duo’s FT recipe this week was for a cooling yoghurt ‘soup’ – the dairy laced with pomegranate juice, ground coriander, garlic, vinegar and a tickle of Tabasco, and garnished with grapes, herbs, peppery radish, fresh herbs and a few ice cubes to keep things chilled. A refreshing evening supper “and also a great dinner party starter”… (come on guys, get on message).
• Hive down: BLACKCURRANT BAKED ALASKA KLAXON – honked by Mr Slater, in the Observer. Also, a more Nigel-casual assembly of baked peaches, blackcurrants, amaretti and ricotta.
• And bring that horn back for three luscious apricot recipes by Diana Henry in the Sunday Telegraph Stella magazine: apricot and moscato jellies with mascarpone cream; poached apricots with star anise and vanilla; and an upside down apricot cornmeal (polenta) and lime cake. I love all these things.
• Three appealing recipes by Florence Knight in The Sunday Times Magazine. All inspired by Greece: chicken marinated in yoghurt with courgette ribbons, feta and dried olives (forgot to put ‘add the yoghurt to the marinade’ in the instructions though); salt baked bream doused in flaming ouzo; and an amazing looking/sounding tart which appears to be cross between a semolina cake, custard tart and baklava. Called a galaktoboureko, apparently; I suspect it requires a strong coffee on the side.
• Check out Anna Jones’ gorgeous summer tarts in Guardian Cook (only released online on Mondays, now. Booooo).

 

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Weekend Menu, 13 and 14 August 2016

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Grilled quail with aubergine and graviera

Marianna Leivaditaki, The Guardian ‘Cook’

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Blueberry pie

Claire Ptak, The Guardian ‘Cook’

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Apricot and moscato jellies with mascarpone cream

Diana Henry, The Sunday Telegraph ‘Stella’

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Blackcurrant baked Alaska

Nigel Slater, The Observer

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