Cookery book club - August - Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard and Every Grain of Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop

[Wearytiger]

Welcome to the Mumsnet cookery bookclub! Each month we choose two cookery books. 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!

For July our books were:

• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Veg Every Day
• Madhur Jaffrey Ultimate Curry Bible AND / OR madhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy AND / OR Hairy Bikers' Great Curries

And we posted here.

For August, our books are:

• Fuchsia Dunlop Every Grain of Rice
• Dan Lepard Short and Sweet

For September our books will be:

• Tessa Kiros Falling Cloudberries
• any book from the River Cafe books

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. We pick books three months ahead so will be choosing October's books this month.

[Pantah630]

Ooo good idea pete how about Delia's Winter Collection for November?

I'm not in so far with August, have a cousin staying from the States he's still in bed, am not bitter and frustrated that my day is ruined at all until midweek then we are off to Donnington till Sunday night. Will attempt to get back on track the following week.

I have gone back to Jerusalem and made the chicken with caramelised onions again though :)

[PeteCampbellsRecedingHairline]

Gordon's ultimate cookery course is £5 on amazon if that makes any difference to picking it?

I'm trying to think of an autumnal cookbook!

[PeteCampbellsRecedingHairline]

Some cheap Sophie Dahl books too. I've never tried any of her recipes though.

[greensnail]

Hi everyone! I seemed to fall off the end of last month's thread as we had so many houseguests in July I was struggling to find time to cook anything new. I hope to do better this month. Had intended to do the twice cooked pork from every grain of rice this evening but wasn't able to get the ingredients I needed, so my pork was twice cooked and delicious but I had to make up my own sauce from what I could find in my cupboards. The pork was lovely though and I have frozen some extra pork belly that I had boiled so well be ready to try the recipe properly one I can sort out the ingredients.

Am planning to make tea cakes from short and sweet next week one day. Am planning on waiting for a rainy day to spend baking with my girls, but just lots of sunshine here at the moment!

[UptoapointLordCopper]

We make those tea cakes quite often. I have also used the dough to make chelsea buns type things. If you use the white chocolate you get this fantastic fragrance when you bite into the bread.

[greensnail]

Sounds great, I've bought dripping to use but might try white choc another time.

I'm struggling to find sweet fermented sauce for the Chinese cooking. Anyone have any ideas where I can find it? Does it go by another name??

[HuevosRancheros]

Greensnail, sweet fermented sauce is just hoisin sauce :)
Have a look at the glossary at the back - the one I buy is actually the same brand as in her picture, but I'm sure any supermarket version will do :)

[glorious]

snail have you seen the section at the back on ingredients? There are pictures, descriptions and Chinese characters. Sweet fermented sauce is most often called hoisin if you're in the supermarket, though I prefer the brands in Chinese places, e.g. we have mong lee shang.

[glorious]

cross post

[HuevosRancheros]

We are off on our hols tomorrow, so no cooking for me for a bit :( :)

What I love about Fuchsia Dunlop is that she has got me to buy fermented tofu! I never knew what those strange jars were in my Korean/Chinese grocers, and so I took the plunge and bought some - white and red.
Smells strange, and I guess it is, but no more so than say, stilton, or soy sauce or fish sauce..... any other fermented thing. I made the 'Tuzi's slow-cooked ribs with red fermented tofu', and it was amazing. Except.... I used quorn instead of ribs, as we're veggie! DH actually found it a bit meaty, it is quite a strong flavour, but he said he didn't dislike it, just that 'it took some getting used to'
I also tried to buy ya cai, but didn't get quite the right thing, but it was close enough for the dry fried beans, they were lovely.

So, as I thank Thomasina Miers for Chipotle en Adobo (which is still going into everything!), I thank Fuchsia Dunlop for stinky tofu! And I therefore thank whoever suggested these books :). I had never heard of TM before, and I had not had much luck with a previous Fuchsia one (Sichuan cooking?), as it was so meat-based, not much veggie. This one has loads of tofu stuff which I love, and some adaptable meaty ones

Yay!

[Xiaoxiong]

Ok - jersey milk and clotted cream loaf from short and sweet is coming together - just waiting for milk to cool to make the sponge. I'm going to make the cheese and pepper buttons again later today as we have friends round for a drink in the garden and they'll be perfect. Finally we have a half bottle of wine about to turn into vinegar so I'm going to freeze it and buy walnuts to make the red wine and walnut loaf later in the week.

Huevos having grown up in China it always makes me laugh that most English people's reaction to stinky tofu is identical to the Chinese reaction to Stilton or Roquefort ("eugh, why would anyone want to eat that, milk from an animal left to go mouldy till it's actually blue!??")

[glorious]

Yes it's quite inconsistent of us isn't it xiao. When we were on holiday in Anhui our driver was extremely surprised we liked it because most tourists don't apparently. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to until it was too late

The loaf sounds yummy.

[pregnantpause]

I made my first venture into every grain of rice today. We had a feast of sorts, the red braised pork which was soo aromatic and delicious, I had to restrain dh from eating the lot to himself. It smelt and tasted wonderful and was very easy to make. I really rate this recipe. Alongside we had the garlic broccoli, the bean sprouts with Chinese chives, and plain white rice. All very nice, particularly the bean sprouts.

I tried and failed to make the sticky dumplings, but was foiled by my scales breaking and my own inability to work out what 75g from 1.5kilo of flour is. I am sure there is a way, I seem to recall doing these sort of things in maths and physics in school, but I'm jiggered if I can figure it out. All baking/measuring in casa pp is therefore postponed until I acquire new scales.

[Forgetfulmog]

I made the Toll House Cookies from Short & Sweet today - absolutely delicious! The cookie dough was yummy raw too . Also made the Wheetabix muffins for DH to take to work for breakfasts - he will let me know what they're like!

[Forgetfulmog]

Oh one thing about the cookies - I found the dough very crumbly, even after chilling, & couldn't slice it as the recipe says to; I broke off small pieces & flattened them on the baking tray instead - they looked more rustic that way

[ELR]

Hi all back from four days days away, so marking place and catching up on the thread. Bit late but just made the Kerala fish curry from hb from last month and it tastes yum.
I have ear marked a few recipes from EGoR and will pop into London on Wednesday morning and fit in a quick trip to china town.
Going to make the chocolate custard muffins and also the marmalade flapjacks and tgen will fi in a few bread recipes this weekend too.

[minimuffin]

Hello I was on the thread in May but life got a bit hectic so I haven't been cooking and joining in, but following the thread avidly - I love it. I love the books being chosen too.

I had Short & Sweet anyway and I love it. I'm not generally a home bread maker but I had a go at the Easy White Bread recipe and it is just amazing. I thought the technique was interesting - no pummelling (which is the bit I quite like, but hey...) I really want to try the multigrain and honey bread on Xiaoxiong's recommendation.

I've also made the spelt & ginger cookies (gorgeous), sour cherry & oat cookies (gorgeous), marmalade flapjacks (gorgeous) banana bran muffins (good and I use for lunch boxes)

Bought the book for my brother's girlfriend and she made me the vanilla fudge and black russian caramels from it (gorgeous).

So I'm a fan. The one recipe I really want to try at some point is the pear mousse cake - anyone tried it? It looks to die for.

I will see if I can get EGOR from the library but we're off on hols on Friday so not sure I'm going to get much time to cook before August is out - it sounds promising though. I bought Jerusalem as a result of this thread and have been enjoying cooking from it. Also I discovered Tessa Kiros recently and bought Falling Cloudberries in June - everything I've tried from it (which isn't that much yet) has worked perfectly and been delicious so am delighted she is coming up in September

Lucas Hollweg Good Things to Eat might be a good autumn book - it's a lovely book but only downside is his recipes are only available online to Times subscribers

[glorious]

pregnantpause your feast sounds great, and glad the red braised pork was a hit.

[greensnail]

Thanks for the help with the sweet fermented sauce. Tried to say thanks they other night but mumsnet wouldn't let me post for some reason.

Made the tea cakes today, and they are so good. Am fasting tomorrow so hope there will be one left for me to eat on Wednesday.

Am waiting for my wing yip order to arrive before I crack on with more from egor so sticking to short and sweet at the moment. Am planning to try the spiced aubergine and lentil pies next (mainly because dd1 made me buy an aubergine and I have no idea what to do with it as none of us are that keen on them).

[Xiaoxiong]

Uptoapoint thank you for recommending the jersey and clotted cream loaf - it is indeed divine!! The texture is just perfect for both sandwiches and toast and it goes this lovely creamy golden brown when toasted. Even DH who doesn't generally like white bread liked it!

[Pantah630]

Will have a look mini there needs to be more to my Times subscription than super fiendish suduko

[UptoapointLordCopper]

XiaoXiong

All the sponge-method bread are easy and nice - it's our standard loaf. I start the sponge before going off to work and continue after coming home (part-timer. At work, that is. Very serious about my bread. ) I've started customising them now, but mostly I coat them with black and white sesame seeds, or sometimes poppy seeds.

One of the Chinese cookbooks I use quite often is Classic Food of China by Yan Kit So. They have a recipe for Teochew braised duck/goose. Yum yum yum.

[ScrambledSmegs]

Oh my stars I have Short & Sweet. And Falling Cloudberries. And I totally missed out on Veg Every Day.

Can I join? I've only made one thing from Short & Sweet so far but it was good. Soya and Linseed bread. Very tasty, lasts for a while (had to refrigerate in the hot weather, that didn't do it much good) and not too faffy.

So much else I want to try. I may be back. If the baby deigns to sleep again...

Er, I'm going through a Claudia Roden phase at the moment. If you haven't already 'done' her books I would love any excuse to make more food from Arabesque. I think DH would like it too

[ScienceRocks]

No cooking from me at the moment as I am away from home

[PeteCampbellsRecedingHairline]

I made my first recipe this month. We had ham, egg and potato pie from Short and Sweet. It got a big thumbs up from everyone.

I just realised that this is the first time I've made pastry since secondary school. It still tastes the same.