Cookery bookclub - May - Jerusalem by Ottolenghi and Kitchen Diaries I by Nigel Slater

[Curioustiger]

Come join the Mumsnet cookery bookclub! Each month we choose two cookery books - one popular, like Nigella / Jamie / Delia, so you probably already have it / can borrow it and one a bit more unusual. We cook a minimum of two recipes each - you choose the recipe, they just have to be ones you have never cooked before- which works out at four new recipes each month.Then we chat about them!

To see our April thread about Feast by Nigella and the Smitten Kitchen blog / cookbook, click here ... This thread is still live as we're quite taken with these books and are keeping on going!

For May, our books are:

• Jerusalem by Ottolenghi
• Kitchen Diaries

and we'll post on this thread.

For June our books will be

• Mexican Food Made Easy by Thomasina Miers
• Thirty Minute Meals by Jamie Oliver

We will always try to pick at least one book with recipes available on the Internet, and local libraries are great for cookbooks if you can order in advance, so don't be put off if your cookbook collection isn't threatening the foundations of your house extensive.

We have veggies, low carbers and 5:2ers on the thread so this is very diet compatible! Although I refuse to take any responsibility for cake-induced weight gain (even my own).

Right I chose the braised eggs with tahini sauce and sumac. It was nice.

The flavours, for me, were new, and it was interesting. I would like more crunch, the egg, lamb, and tomatoes are soft, the only crunch is the nuts. Id like a crunchy salad alongside next time.Dh gave it 8/10, me 6/10. Enjoyed trying it, but I know it won't enter regular meals .

Starter to impress when guests are around.

Just made the pasta with tomatoes and basil from KD1. It was ok - quick and easy to make, but not desperately exciting. It probably tastes better made with homegrown tomatoes and basil rather than supermarket ones, but we don't have a garden.

Haven't quite managed to join in but I would urge the Nigel doubters to try the roasted aubergine tomato and chickpea salad on p154 of KD. Utterly sublime recipe. Needs some decent bread to mop up the delicious juices - oh and the ham is imho entirely optional.

I'm a huge fan of both Nigel Slater and Ottolenghi - very different styles of cooking but quite complementary I'd say - Nigel inspires you to eat well on an everyday basis, Ottolenghi is more weekend cooking.

I'm not finding KD very inspiring either - tried the mushroom lasagne.....tasted, well, dull. I tried a mushroom and pasta dish from Anna Del Conte too just to make sure it wasn't the mushrooms or my cooking and that was sublime.

It's funny because about from KD I have all of NS's books, but I rarely cook from them. but this thread has inpsired me to go through all of my books one by one (some task I can tell you, as I have around 150) and mark with a post-it tag each recipe that I fancy trying one day. And amazingly, when I went though my NS books there were so many pages tagged that it become almost silly to bother! I don't know why I haven't been more appreciative of his stuff until now. I think it's the sheer simplicity and accessibility of most of it. As someone said upthread, they are often more like suggestions for good and classic combinations, rather than intricate recipes, which let's face it, is what most of us need for most days!

apart from, not about from

Thereal- I post it my books too! And once cooked/tried I write my feeling and move the postit to the bottom of the page, so when I go through next time I will remember what we thought.
Dh particularly likes it as when I am away he looks through them to find one where I have written 'dh and girls heart' or somesuch and knows if he makes it the DC will eat it.
He also says it reads in my 'cooking voice' which he misses when I'm gone

I always write in my cookery books - they are full of notes and scribbles!

Pregnant Pause that is so sweet

I have post it notes in most of mine but there a few where nothing has appealed.

For all my moaning about KD's there would be lots of post its in there, so Nigel is doing something right

I write in my cookbooks too - thought I was the only one - and have little tabs to remind me of things that have appealed at some point but haven't yet made. I also have a recipe box (with partitions for fish, bread, souls etc) for things I cut out of magazines or print off the Internet, which I love.

I want a recipe box. I can imagine I'd need a big one.

How do you organise it though? Alphabetically or by ingredient?

I'm getting a bit too excited about this

Even more exciting, I've just had an email to say Jerusalem has arrived

Having been mean about old Nige and his cookbooks, I just spent ages going through my recipe file (yes, I have a recipe file!) and realised that so many of my 'go to' recipes are his. His KD book may not inspire, but I can't think of one recipe I've ever done of his that doesn't work. They're reliable, sensible, fool proof, and enjoyable. I take it back, my dear Nigel...

I'm starting to get quite into kitchen diaries. I think seeing it as suggestions of what to cook rather than a recipe book helps. It does the way I cook on a day to day basis as I'm generally not much of a recipe follower.

I also write in my cookery books, and am having to hold myself back from doing this in these ones as they're from the library. I also have as recipe box although it's a bit neglected at the moment and needs a good sort out. It's on the vague list of jobs I keep telling myself I'll have time for once my girls start school.

Hi just started a new thread for go to recipes if you fancy contributing. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/food_and_recipes/1754866-What-are-your-go-to-recipes-Please-share

I love this thread! Yesterday I made the chicken with Jerusalem artichokes from Jerusalm. It was tasty, I had the leftovers for lunch today and it was even better then. Tonight it's the pork chops with mustard sauce from KD and tomorrow the stuffed aubergine.

I have NEVER written in a cookery book, but, what a good idea, I'm going to start right now.

kneedeep my recipe box is from Phoenix cards and came with ready printed partition cards. I lurve it.

Puffle I started writing in my recipe books years ago when I was heavily into making cocktails. I'd try and remember a week or so later which ones had been good and which ones had failed and found I couldn't remember so starting putting ratings next to the recipe and it went from there.

I have failed abysmally to make anything from Jerusalem this month, apologies. Not being able to see a physical copy of the book has really deterred me, much as it did with the Smitten Kitchen blog last month. I think it is because I am lazy. To me, one of life's little pleasures is leafing through a cookbook and marking recipes I want to make. I will keep looking at the library for an Ottolenghi book, though, as there has been so much praise for him on here.

Round 2 for KD here tonight. We had the salmon and dill fish cakes and the lemon amaretti pots. The fish cakes were very nice, served with dill and grain mustard Greek yoghurt, jersey royals and salad leaves. Not spectacular but a nice change, I'm far too fond of slightly underdone, meltin your mouth, pan fried salmon to make it too often though.
I know it's No-Bake May for me BUT there's no cooking involved in the pud, just whisking, folding and bashing. These little pots of goodness will be made again and again, thank you Nigel.....they're delicious :)

Salmon and dill fishcakes here too this evening. I wasn't at all convinced they were going to hold together when I was making them so was quite impressed when they did.

I quite enjoyed them but agree with whoever said they needed a bit more kick to them. They went down ok with the family but don't think anyone was blown away by them. My main issue with them was that I seemed to need a lot more salmon to feed the family with this recipe than I would usually use for a fish recipe for us so it worked out quite expensive. I guess the flip side of that is that it is an easy way to get a decent amount of fish into them.

Am browsing kd at the moment trying to decide what to do next. I will save Jerusalem for weekends I think.

Ok I have also reappraised Nigel as I made his really good spaghetti bolognaise tonight. Sans milk because I forgot it! But it was really good, unctuous and rich. You always know you've found a good 'un when you're compelled to hover by the stove 'checking the seasoning'! And honestly I was perfectly happy with my own spaghetti Bol recipe (loosely carluccio-based) so am impressed that Nigel has raised my game.

tiger that's good to hear as I was planning on asking the spag Bol tomorrow or wed lie you m happy with my recipe but am always happy to try another recommended one.

I did put a cheeky bit of Worcestershire sauce in elr. My stock cubes are the very low salt kind so really I was just balancing the recipe back towards Nigel's intentions, I reckon!

Puffle- sometimes, when you buy cookbooks in charity shops, the person before you has written in them. I love it when that happens ignores the fact that previous owner is probably dead

tiger do try it with the milk next time - it really kicks the sauce up from great to mindblowing. It's absolutely my keeper spag bol recipe. Also there's a funny column he wrote here in the Guardian about all the different possible variations you can do to the sauce - different meats, adding chicken livers, whatever.

For those moaning about crap cookbook indices - can I just rave about Eat Your Books again? It basically lets you google your hard copy cookbooks together with particular food blogs or websites. So for instance, if I have some harissa to use, I can search all my cookbooks for the ingredient "harissa", and it will tell me all the recipes in each book or preferred website that contains harissa, even ones that don't have harissa in the title or wouldn't have been indexed under harissa in a traditional hard copy index. Or alternatively you can just search "harissa" in Jerusalem and it will give you a list of all recipes that contain harissa just in that one book.

It does take about 15 minutes or so to add all the cookbooks you own (or you can just add the ones you rely on) to your virtual bookshelf when you sign up, and decide which websites you want to add as well (I've got smitten kitchen and a couple of others but removed the BBC Good Food as it was overwhelming the results and I don't trust all the recipes) but once you've done that, you're hot to trot.

And best of all - I can go shopping or to a market, see that what I planned to buy for dinner is full price but there's an amazing deal on something random like red mullet, remember there was a recipe for red mullet in a cookbook I own but can't remember which book and don't know if I have all the ingredients. Pull out my phone, log into the Eat Your Books website, plug in red mullet and it tells me that it's in Elizabeth David Provencal Food and I need to buy some white wine and tomatoes but I have everything else already.

Thanks xia I've bookmarked that site and will try it out. Right, just been to the market, now off to the kitchen to make preps for Jerusalem meatballs with broad beans, and possibly KD Really fast cake (may 15). Will report back later.