Six Dinners Later....

So I signed up for a new and interesting website in January called Six Dinners Later.

Its kinda the antithesis of just keeping in touch with friends by stalking them on facebook in that you have to actually meet people, in person, shock! horror! strangers! or as I shall call them new friends.

The way it works is: 

You sign up to the website and get invited to your first dinner...
You attend the first dinner and meet your host and 4 other people off the website, who hopefully you don't know
Then once you've wined and dined, you then arrange your own dinner party inviting your host from the first dinner and 4 new people
These 4 people then invite you to dinner and by the end of the cycle of dinners you've met 25 new people

So I went to my first dinner in January, hosted by the lovely Sophie and had a great time.... 
There was lots of jokes, especially around Come Diner with Me comparisons, lots of chat and lots of wine (and of course food).

Then I hosted my own dinner in February, which was lots of fun, but the amount of bottles we got through was a little scary!

The menu was homemade ciabatta with baked Camembert

Cassoulet

And my now famous pear tarte tartin

And just to make sure everyone knows, one of my guests was Andy Riley of Bunny Suicides fame - he kindly signed my book!

Can't wait for the return dinners, to see which new people I meet and what people get up to (you don't have to cook or even host at your own house - so a world of opportunities out there!)

The Camden Road Cook

#28 - More miso, soup stylee

So having a large jar of brown rice miso knocking around I thought I should try a miso soup.

I had the following ingredients:

1 teaspoon of the miso will do a cup of soup (not a cuppa soup!), so I used a large heaped teaspoon for a bowl of soup.

I made up 500ml of chicken stock, mixed in the miso paste and the sea vegetables, heating gently (boiling will kill the live miso) for 5 minutes, until the sea vegetables are completely re-hydrated.

et volia:

All that's missing is perhaps some tofu for a light lunch.

The Camden Road Cook

#27 - Jamie style Japanese and satisfying the miso aubergine urge

So the other day I read in the Waitrose 'Weekend' about an unusual ingredient - brown rice miso paste and this reminded me of one of my favourite Japanese dishes of the moment, grilled miso aubergine.

So having eaten this loads out I haven't ever seen a recipe - except the one in the Weekend (which I misplaced!) I made it up....

I took one aubergine, cut in half lengthways and scored it in a diamond pattern.

I then mixed up one tbsp of miso paste with some sake, dark soy sauce and sushi rice seasoning.

This was then spread liberally over the aubergine and grill under a medium to low grill for 10-15 minutes until the aubergine is soft.

Not a great picture, but you get the idea :)

So having decided to cook the aubergine I was delighted when PP announced he was cooking a Japanese inspired Jamie Oliver recipe for beef carpaccio:

http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/tv-show-recipes/jamies-christmas-lock-in-recipes/posh-japanese-inspired-beef-carpaccio-recipe

And this is what our one looked like - with sea vegetables and pea shoots instead of the dried seaweed and 'interesting cress' (what the hell is that btw?!)

The Camden Road Cook

#26 - Stuffed squash aka several ways with squash

Feta and sundried tomato stuffed squash

So this stuffed squash recipe comes from one in Stylist magazine:

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/recipes/feta-stuffed-butternut-squash

and its really very easy - I halved the amount, so taking one butternut squash, cut in half and remove the seeds, season and roast for 20 mins:

Meanwhile heat oil in a frying pan, add onions (or my variation leeks) and cook until soft, then add the garlic and cook over a low heat for 5 mins.

Mix the sundried tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, crumbled feta and cooked onions in a bowl.

Remove the squash from the oven and scoop out most of the flesh to make space for the filling - I added some of the squash to the sundried and feta mix before filling up the squash and roasting for another 10 mins:

Now I had chosen a rather large squash, so I ate this on its own, the Stylist recommends serving with green beans for a healthy lunch:

Roast squash, blue cheese and sage tart

So this little number comes from a recipe in Olive magazine and requires you to make the pastry so I thought I'd give it a go..

You can make any shape of tart - it doesn't have to be square, but you need to make it 3cm bigger than you need and then fold the edges over to form the shell. Goats cheese would also be good with the squash and sage.

You'll need the following ingredients:

plain flour 200g

butter 100g

parmesan 100g

1 egg

butternut squash 500g, peeled and cubed

olive oil

roquefort 100g

sage leaves - a handful, shredded

- Heat the oven to 180 degrees (for fan assisted). Rub the flour and butter together to make breadcrumbs, add half the parmesan, seasoning and egg and mix to a dough (you can do all this with a food processor if you have one). Wrap and chill while you make the filling.

- Toss the squash with a tbsp of oil and lots of seasoning. Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast for 20 mins. Cool while you roll out the pastry (nb must buy a rolling pin - sometimes a wine bottle just doesn't cut it!)

- Use a little flour to dust the work surface and then roll out the pastry to a rough 30x 20 cm rectangle. Put on a clean baking tray and arrange the squash on the pastry leaving a 3cm border. Dot over the cheese and scatter the sage and the rest of the parmesan.

- Bring up the edges of the tart to make a freeform shell. Glaze with milk or egg then cook for 30 mins until crisp and light golden - serve warm.

Ta da -the finished product, with green salad, ideal for a Saturday lunch!

The Camden Road Cook

#25 - Chinese spiced duck, turkish delight jelly

This was meant to be for a dinner party - but that was doomed with drop outs left, right and centre :(

But after spending 2 days marinading the duck I just had to share it with you...

Again the main course was scarfed down without any pictures, but I got the recipe from Domestic Sluttery so you can see it here:

http://www.domesticsluttery.com/2012/01/sluttishly-savoury-chinese-spiced.html

So all I need to add is that it was weelll worth the wait in marinading time, the flavours were spectacular and although I think I still need to work out my oven temperatures (mine turned out a bit darker/singed), but very nice cripsy tasty duck.

I served it with pak choi and pepper stir fry noodles - even picky P liked it.

To follow up a light dessert was required, and again I stole inspiration from Olive magazine for these little ones:

Turkish Delight jellies (enough for 6):

soak 4 leaves of gelatine in cold water until softened. Put 4 tbsp rose -syrup, the juice from one lemon and 6 tbsp caster sugar in a pan with 400ml water and heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Squeeze the gelatine and add, stirring until dissolved. Add 6 tbsp Grand Marnier. Strain into 6 small glasses and chill for about 4 hours or overnight until set.

My variation above includes a rose water and raspberry creme patisserie that went wrong on the macaroon madness day and needed using up - a perfect paring!

One note on the recipe is that mine do not look the correct (read same) colour as those in the magazine, so I suspect they did not use Grand Marnier in the photographed recipe, but instead another pale orange liqueur like Triple Sec or Cointreau, which must work just as well :)

The Camden Road Cook

#24 - Marvellous Macaroons!

hmmmm I'm OBSESSED with macaroons at the moment....

So I booked myself on the Marvellous Macaroon course at the Atelier des Chefs.

We learnt some top tips, but the best bit was tasting the end results et voila:

The yellow ones were filled with a lime, ginger buttercream.....hmmm

The pink ones were filled with peanut butter creme patisserie and raspberry jam (not so sure about this one as I don't like peanuts except in Thai food)

The olive green ones were filled with salted butter caramel - that WAS the highlight!

here are some close ups:

Nom nom nom!!

So inspired by what seemed easy at the course I attempted my own....

The brown are chocolate shells (flavoured with cocao) filled with a chocolate honey ganache.

The pink are that vivid colour from using powder food colouring - aint it fab!

We used the left over ganache to fill the pink shells and also made some lime buttercream to finish off the last ones.

The pink were meant to be filled with a rose and raspberry creme patisserie - unfortunately my first time making it and it just didn't thicken enough - too runny for macaroon filling, so we dipped the odd ones in it instead!

The chocolate shells didn't turn out quite as pretty as the pink ones, but everyone

agreed that they tasted good ;)

The Camden Road Cook - signing off with a mouth full of macs!

#23 - Dinner party no 2, tarra-gone chicken and chocolate mousse

So for dinner party number 2 I was planning on making tarragon chicken with chocolate mousse as my dessert.

The tarragon chicken is from a recipe in Olive magazine and has one, well maybe two ingredients - Tarragon and Chicken.... so what could I not find in Sainsburys??

A complete lack of tarragon, they did have chicken though!!

So this is my tweak on the recipe using lemon thyme instead - lemon and thyme and chicken go well so I thought it would be a good combination to try.

For 4 you'll need the following:

sunflower oil 1tbsp

shallots 2 sliced

garlic 2 cloves crushed

chicken thighs 8 skinless and boneless

dry white wine 100ml (and the rest of the bottle for the chef?!)

chicken stock 400ml - I religiously use the jelly ones now

cornflour 1/2 tbsp

half-fat creme fraiche 3 tbsp

tarragon leaves (or if you want to follow my variation lemon thyme) 2 tbsp roughly chopped

- heat the oil in a large non stick frying pan and gently fry the shallots for 5 mins until soft and lightly coloured. Add the garlic for the last minute of the cooking time.

- Season the chicken thighs and add to the pan. Fry for 2-3 minutes, turning once until very lightly coloured. Pour in the wine and bring to the boil. Stir in the stock and return to a gentle simmer. Cook for 10 mins.

- Mix the cornflour with 1/2 tbsp cold water and stir into the pan. As soon as the sauce thickens, stir in the creme fraiche and tarragon (lemon thyme) then season. Remove from the heat. Serve with new potatoes.

I also served green beans with my lemon thyme chicken and the 3 of us polished off the lot! (Enough for 4 people supposedly - I blame V&I!)

I don't have any pictures of the chicken seeing as we polished it off waay too quickly, but I managed to pause and take a couple of pictures of the Chocolate Mousse before we dove into that!

The chocolate mousse was another Olive recipe - thanks to T for buying me that gift subscription!

Again this serves 4 and this time we didn't eat the lot between the 3 of us as it was very rich:

125g good quality plain chocolate

4 eggs separated

2 tsp golden caster sugar

splash of booze (this is my addition - brandy or grand marnier would be very nice!)

Break up the chocolate and put into a heatproof bowl resting on top of, but not in, a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until the chocolate melts (this is where I would add booze). Cool a little, then stir in the egg yolks mixing well.

Whisk the whites in a bowl until the form soft peaks, then stir in the sugar and whisk again to regain the texture you have lost. Carefully fold the egg whites into the chocolate mix, spoon into small glasses or I used small coffee cups and chill until set.

This is ideal to make the day before a dinner party and keep in the fridge, I actually made it in the morning and it was set by dinner time.

Happy eating!!

The Camden Road Cook