Keen cooks- what lovely things have you made during lockdown?

[BoogleMcGroogle]

One of the upsides off lockdown for me has been the chance, and a bit more time, to get out a few of my cookbooks and try some old favourites and new things.

Favourites here so far have been:
Proper French seven hour lamb
Perfecting salsa verde for rare roast beef
Nigella's chicken shwarma
Three great curries from Leon Happy Curries book
Allegra McKevedy's pommes dauphinoises.

Much asparagus. But especially an asparagus and lemon risotto and a Nigel Slater asparagus tart.

Polenta, orange and almond cake.
Nigel Slater's chocolate brownies ( oh my!)

I've also baked several types of bread ( rye, wholemeal, naan), which were not at all bad.

I also made a quiche like a brick.

Please share and discuss your lovely food....,

Um, that all sounds very fancy! I'm made shit loads of cakes, loads of curries and flatbreads etc but nothing nearly as fancy as yours sounds.

Can I come for dinner?

None of it is very fancy. I can't do proper 'cheffy' things like French sauces. My favourite meals involve putting flavoursome things in a casserole for a long time and just letting them get on with it.

I wish I could do pastry though. I had a vision of a rich, wobbly quiche Lorraine. Served with a rocket salad. What I made got resentfully eaten with baked beans and ketchup. It was a horror of a meal!

We've been eating very well in lockdown - we've had regular meat/dairy/veg boxes and basing our meals on them rather than whatever we fancy at the supermarket that day. I did a pork loin braised in milk the other day which was delicious and gave enough leftovers for several more meals. I also have an 8 month old so his weaning has got progressively more fancy! Yesterday he had a pizza made out of a polenta base with all sorts on top for lunch and then a bowl of carrot and orange soup for tea.

Did a vegan mushroom and lentil wellington
Proper takeaway style saag aloo, that went down a treat!

Pastry is easy - you put the plain flour and cold diced butter and salt/sugar into a food processor and whizz it until it's mixed in and then add and egg yolk/ 2 tbs of water and whizz until it goes into a ball.

Takes 5 mins max.

I made a fabulous buerre blanc to have with seabass and asparagus the other day. Had to really stop myself eating it like soup.

I’ve been perfecting my Polish cooking (dp is Polish) so lots of pierogi: ruskie (potato and cottage cheese) and mięsem (meat) Bigos (sour cabbage and meat stew) szaszłwc (shashlik), a really yum dried mushroom soup, zapiekanka which is like a french stick pizza.

I’ve really enjoyed it! And dp is a really good teacher so it’s been fun for us both.

@underneaththeash have you an exact recipe/measurements for pastry. It's my nemeis I'm shit at making it.

Can you share the chicken schwarma recipe? Would love to cook that this weekend!

Pastry is half fat to flour. 200g flour and 100g butter will give you enough for a small quiche.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/oven-cookedd*chickenen_04728/ampp

runwithme I've posted above. It's delicious and ideal for lockdown as once you've eaten this much garlic it's not really right to go out in public!

I used to be a vegetarian so not much experience cooking meat. I got a meat delivery with things I would never, ever buy. I have made beef stew and a pork shoulder with crackling that was really good. It has given me some confidence and helped me to get over the "ick" of meat. I don't know that I will buy either again, though.

Thank you! I love a bit of garlic - great for social distancing too!