This weekend the recipes were all about cooking fruit. Well, not all about, but it was a common theme. For less fruity ideas, keep scrolling.
Cooked fruit
The second instalment of Diana Henry’s new book Simple focussed on quick fruit desserts – like fruits baked with marmalade (great idea), warm cherries cooked in butter, lemon, sugar and grappa, and an apricot and amaretti crostata (like a pizza made of sweet pastry).
Florence Knight’s recipes in The Sunday Times’ The Dish included roast plums, which are finished with a mix of their juices, bay and brown butter. Her other suggestions this week were for: honey chicken, figs and polenta; sausages, cannellini bean purée, walnuts and green sauce; and a poached whiting and chilli spaghetti number. All nice.
The prize for the most luxurious fruit went to Claire Ptak in the Guardian’s Cook supplement, thanks to her red wine and wild fennel baked raspberries and figs – all dark and sticky – which could be eaten with creme fraiche, or churned into ice cream.
How about a roast apricot Eton Mess? One of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s recipes from his new, massive, River Cottage A-Z bible, which filled much of The Dish. I liked a number of the other things featured, including ginger and apple braised lamb, potato and cep Dauphinoise, and a baked yoghurt and blackberry cake (good right now for bramble scrabblers).
Saturday’s Guardian magazine saw Tommi Miers suggest a smoked duck and kohlrabi salad with a chilli plum relish. Also, poached peaches for Melba.
Nigel likes his plums cooked – stewed for breakfast, or baked ‘to a golden jelly’ in a cake. Accordingly, his offering to Observer readers included a frosted plum cake for autumn, as well as a frankly divine looking dish of baked onions and soft cheese on Parmesan enriched wet polenta. Ooof.
Mixing things up a bit, Gill Meller’s second Cook Residency column suggested baking pears with rosemary and bacon (for supper with bitter leaves, not pudding), apples baked with sage, lemon and sugar (pudding, this time), and lightly simmered blueberries and thyme, to be spooned over a custard tart or panna cotta. All three look utterly lush.
Other bits
Jamie Oliver went with Jerk roasted vegetables, rice and peas in The Sunday Times mag.
And Nadiya provided a date and honey tea loaf for Saturday’s Times readers. Also, the Only Four Recipes You Need feature returned to this Saturday glossy (PHEW!). The four recipes focused on Spanish tortillas. Have a scan, then forget about them and go straight to the Barrafina version.
More useful, I felt, was a student cookbook feature in The Times’ Weekend pull out, which included 16 recipes every student should know (or learn). Roasts, baked fish, basic tomato sauces, chocolate cake, chicken pies, Thai curries. Decent list but, worryingly, nothing about staple university foods like Scampi Fries sandwiches or last night’s now cold pizza and sweet chilli sauce …
Yet more recipes in The Times were found in the shape of four basic but quality ice creams by Angela Hartnett. Head straight to the pistachio one.
And on a similar ‘yet more’ theme, we saw another set of aubergine recipes from Ottolenghi. In his 500th column, and having provided over 1000 recipes, Yotam returned to everyone’s favourite emoji for a second week in a row. And why not? Seems legit when you read recipes such as glazed baby aubergines stuffed with pork and tofu; smoked aubergine and almond Scotch eggs (though I feat that might be a fiddle); and warm yoghurt with aubergine with fresh tomato and shredded pitta crisps. There’s no sign of slowing down just yet.
White chocolate chip, currant and orange cookies by Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich in the FT Weekend. You know they’ll be top notch. Also on flours and grains and sweet things, I liked the idea of rye porridge with pears and hazelnuts, and a blueberry and coconut Danish ‘Dream’ cake – via Alex Hely-Huchinson in the FT at some point recently (last week?).
Good stuff by Rose Prince in The Telegraph, leading us on a charge into Autumn with black pudding, bacon and apple brunches, potted mushrooms and bone marrow on toast, roast and braised partridge with spiced breadcrumbs, and a blackberry fool with apple jelly.
I’m utterly intrigued by Olia Hercules’ slow cooked courgette ‘caviar’ – to be eaten with bread as a kind of baba ghanoush. Lots of courgettes around at the moment, so no excuse not to give this a go.
And I’m waiting for Anna Jones’ salads to go online – will add the link when it’s up.
On the internet
Need more ideas for your plums? Try these plum squares with marzipan crumble, courtesy of uber blog Smitten Kitchen.
#Supplemental cooking
Inspired to bake fruit for my breakfast today – which meant greengages, hazelnuts and a large and totally healthy dollop of creme fraiche. I’ve also bookmarked Gill Meller and Olia Hercules’ suggestions for some point this week. And that Nigel Slater polenta and onion thing will be supper tomorrow.
Weekend Menu, 3 and 4 September 2016
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Glazed baby aubergines stuffed with pork and tofu
Yotam Ottolenghi, The Guardian
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Ginger and apple braised lamb
Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, The Sunday Times, ‘The Dish’
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Red wine and wild fennel baked fig ice cream
Claire Ptak, The Guardian ‘Cook’
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