The following, by my reckoning, are the best bits from this weekend’s recipe pages.
Bookmark these ones
The Observer Magazine housed a reminder of how good Gill Meller’s book Gather is (£8 off on amazon atm…). I mean, take a look at his samphire and prawns with butter and mace and tell me you don’t want it right now. Not to mention chocolate rye brownies with bay and almonds. His recipes are just the right mix of interesting and achievable.
Ottolenghi’s celeriac recipes in the Guardian Weekend magazine were inventive and on point too. Rosti with a caper and celery salsa, gnocchi with bone marrow and parsley, celeriac and cavolo nero salad with walnuts and pomegranate. So impressive how we can always rely on Yotam and team for inspo.
The Telegraph’s recipe cupboards were mysteriously bare when I checked online on Sunday evening, with only Diana Henry’s sweet potato recipes on view from the weekend papers. No matter, though — I love the idea of adding pickled ginger and lime leaves to a sweet potato soup, and adding a refreshing hit of mint and lime-licked creme fraiche at the end. Obviously it also reduced the number of recipes I had to look through.
The recipe from this week’s selection that I’m absolutely coming back to is Honey & Co’s sea bass filo pie in the FT Weekend Magazine. The sea bass is part roasted, part poached with loads of aromatics, then flaked and mixed with smoked haddock, tarragon, parsley and preserved lemon. A béchemel is made from the fish’s poaching liquor. And then it’s all packed in filo and baked. I see this becoming a dinner party / treat meal go-to — thanks Sarit and Itamar.
Sweet teeth and twists
There were three crazy sounding veg-based bakes in the Guardian’s Cook supplement: spicy fudgy squash cake by Mark Diacono, a parsnip, coconut, spelt and rye cake from Jordan Bourke, and Claire Ptak’s courgette and olive oil bread. See also Dale Berning Sawa’s set of Asian style veg ideas on nearby pages.
Nadiya Hussain used vegetables in her sweet things in Saturday’s Times Magazine too, making brownie-style squares from parsnips, sweet spices, muscavado sugar and clementine zest. NB: If you prefer fruit to veg, look to her rhubarb fool and pomegranate cheesecake.
Also in that glossy were a handful of ‘easy’ frozen puddings from the Donna Hay stable. These are mostly soft cheesecake / key lime style things that get flung in the freezer (presumably because they’d splodge everywhere at room temperature). The column featured a set of colourful, temping pictures, and a lot of material for people with sweet teeth. I think my highlight was probably a salted coconut and passion fruit ‘pie’: desiccated coconut, salt and egg white base, baked; passion fruit, coconut stirred into melting vanilla ice cream; top the base and freeze; cover with whipped cream; eat too much, flagellate.
Thomasina Miers provided something for twist-liking bakers in the Guardian Weekend Magazine: a yoghurt, lemon and cardamom cake. Plus a guinea fowl and wild mushroom puff pastry pie.
Is it holiday time yet?
Making up for The Telegraph going missing in action, The Sunday Times’ recipe team went wild in this month’s The Dish. Their theme for March was ‘travel’, and so the cuisines of various foodie destinations got covered.
Emiko Davies narrowed-in on Maremma in Tuscany (rigatoni with a sausage meat and pancetta ragu, an intriguing cubed sea bass and fish stock pasta sauce, and a coffee-fuelled ricotta pudding).
Jamie was in San Diego (fish tacos — kiwi fruit, lime and chilli salsa).
And Rachel Walker went on an enviable tour of Israel with a crew of chefs, returning with a mouthwatering write-up, and trip inspired recipes such as lemon and za’atar chicken skewers, blackened salmon salad, za’atar lamb cutlets, and Halva ice cream.
For those who holiday at home, it’s also worth noting the hearty and very doable bits and bobs by Claire Thomson in Saturday’s Times Weekend pullout, which were half-inched from the National Trust Family Cookbook — potato gratin, lots of lamb and, most interestingly, a pumpkin, chard, feta and almond crumble, and roasted cabbage with tahini and honey.
Internet tendencies
Haven’t browsed The New York Times‘ recipe pages for a while. But since it’s, you know, ‘failing’, I thought it worth checking in. And indeed it was: not least for David Tanis’ spicy calamari with fregola, Sam Sifton’s meatloaf with caramelised cabbage, and a reminder to cook swordfish steak and serve it with a white wine, cream and caper reduction sauce.
#Supplemental cooking
I managed three breakfasts / brunches on Sunday. The final one involved a crack at Ottolenghi’s celeriac rosti and salsa. Very, very more-ish.
Weekend Menu, 4 and 5 March 2017
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Samphire and prawns with butter and mace
Gill Mellor, The Observer Magazine
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Sea bass filo pie
Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, The FT Weekend Magazine
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Halva ice cream
Yotam Ottolenghi, The Sunday Times, The Dish
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