Supplemental #129

As always, plenty to get your teeth into in this weekend’s recipe supplements. Keep your eyes peeled for one pot wonders, mac ‘n’ cheese, sizzling chilli oil and Jamie’s beetroot curry.

  • It was an Observer Food Monthly weekend. Or, more specifically, it was an OFM Awards weekend, so lots of the material in that supplement focused on winners, rather than home cooking (congratulations all). But do check out the five recipes from Lifetime Achievement award winner, Pierre Koffman. Hearty, classic French, autumnal stuff, like cassoulet, beef cheeks and red wine, tarte fine aux pommes, and a creme caramel.
  • Yoghurt was the central focus of Nigel Slater’s recipes in the Observer mag (as in the regular, non-OFM one). This meant recipes for lamb chops, labneh and a blackberry sauce, and vanilla yoghurt with blueberry sauce and brioche crumbs.
  • I’m really enjoying the FT Weekend’s new policy of including two recipe columns per week. Rowley Leigh stuck his oar in with a partridge, quince and lentil ‘tagine’ (cooked quince and blushing, jointed partridge added at the very end). And Fuchsia Dunlop was back with boiled pork slices with sizzling chilli oil. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: her book Land of Fish and Rice is superb.
  • Two Jamie Oliver recipes appeared on my Sunday Times app: a thick, baked-egg studded black bean ‘Costa Rican’ stew (no chorizo); and a beetroot curry, with ‘tempered’ curry leaves, chillies, ginger and garlic sprinkled over the top. Nice.
  • A day earlier, Diana Henry had featured in the Times Magazine. Like a Trojan horse sent by the Barclay brothers to disrupt (improve) Murdoch’s Saturday glossy. Recipes from her excellent cookbook, Simple, included: roast citrus, ginger and honey chicken; roast potatoes with chilli, mint and preserved lemon; and bream stuffed with pomegranate and walnuts.
  • Nadiya Hussain’s chocolate anise thins in the same magazine will be good with coffee. And, wow, the only four ‘winter dressings’ you’ll ever need. Not that you’ll ever want to make them, once you’ve seen the photos.
  • The Guardian Cook crew excelled, as always. Rachel Roddy’s stuffed peppers looked luscious. I was intrigued by Zuza Zak’s Polish party food – marinated herrings and prunes and a millet salad.
  • Though possibly even more intrigued by the prospect of buckwheat flour, used by Claire Ptak in her baking column for a shortbread (studded with almonds). I suspect they’d go pretty well with her fig leaf creme brulée.
  • The Cook readers’ recipe swap don’t normally make this whizz through papers. No particular reason, save to try to keep some sort of limit on the hyperlinks. But Mehrunnisa Yusef’s lemongrass paste, cashew and coconut soup looked pretty damn tasty on Saturday.
  • Shiiieeeeesh kebab, take a look at Yotam Ottolenghi’s ‘one pot wonders’ in the Guardian weekend magazine, not least the lamb shanks with rice and lemon, and chicken with dates, saffron and freekeh. That’s North London’s dinner parties sorted for next Saturday, then.
  • Guests wouldn’t complain, though, if the menu was on more of a Miers theme – Tommi’s giant pork meatballs and apple Eccles cakes both looked delectable (and easy to produce).
  • Those of you on winter holiday diets should have a word with yourselves and head straight to Diana Henry’s mac ‘n’ cheese recipes in The Sunday Telegraph Stella Magazine. A sharp, tangy, cheddar, cider and mustard mac; a French-ish ham hock macaroni gratin; and pumpkin and chilli macaroni cheese. #cheesecoma
  • In Saturday’s paper, Stephen Harris suggested a couple of ways with mussels: one, a classic Mariniere and the other with lemongrass and chilli.
  • The Telegraph also provided a set of decadent chocolate recipes (John Whaite’s chocolate and liquorice tart looked particularly interesting); and a trio of Diana Henry curated recipes with coffee at the core (espresso and pecan brownies, Richard Turner’s coffee marinated pork ribs and a coffee and chocolate hot drink).

On the internet

Serious Eats is the places to look if you’re interested in a really geeky (probably unnecessarily so) breakdown of beef and barley soup.

#Supplemental cooking

Nothing from the papers this weekend. But a scrag end of lamb and squash stew went down very nicely.

 


Weekend Menu, 15 and 16 October 2016

Grilled lamb cutlets, labneh and blackberries

Nigel Slater, the Observer

Beef short rib with barley and potatoes

Yotam Ottolenghi, the Guardian

Chocolate and liquorice tart

John Whaite, The Telegraph