Cookery Book Club January - Two Hungry Italians and Nigel Slaters Eat/Jamie's Great Britain

[Pantah630]

Happy New Year everyone, sorry this is a bit late. We picked Two Hungry Italians, Nigel's Eat (as lots got it for Christmas) and/or Jamie's Great Britain for this month.

I have the Italians on order and will look in the library for either of the other two or check out Jamie's website.

We're running short of ideas for future months if anyone has any suggestions. We have The Jewelled Kitchen earmarked for warmer months. I bought Tom Kerridge on Kindle so am keen to do that one soon.

Damn, I was trying to be good and stick to just cooking from the books/clipping I already have. Should have known better than to look at this thread! Now have a very strong urge to go and order Eat - love the feedback about it being a book that you can just use to inspire meals from what you already have in the house. I had been trying to cook from Jerusalem (missed the cook book club doing it, but then got for my birthday), but find it hard to pre-plan and buy all the ingredients.

I'm making the Epic chicken salad today from Jamies Great Britain and for pudding I'm making Seville orange puddle pudding it's from the waitrose magazine looks really nice.
So got two greedy Italians yesterday and looks interesting, def going to make the artichoke soup with chicken dumplings and also like the look of the courgette rolls on the first page. Just can't seem to get into Eat, must try harder!!

Elr- I really fancy the Courgettes too- I am sad enough to have written in my diary in August as a reminder to make them when we have Courgettes in the garden

The soup is lovely, I will make it again. The dumplings are lovely, though tempting to overcook. (I thought so)

I'm making the potato gnocchi with tomato and mozzarella sauce this evening, looking forward to it.

Pregnant you may be sad but I am right there with you, I've just written it on my calender as I always have loads of courgettes going spare!
Please post back on your gnocchi I love it but can't stand shop bought so only ever have it when I go to posh restaurants!

Evening all, reporting back on the Epic chicken salad. It was good DH and I enjoyed it, dc's weren't too fussed due to everything being mixed up and tomato juice soaking into the bread, but they ate it! I would make it again but wouldn't bother roasting an entire chicken as it was a bit of a faff.
I think chicken breast wrapped in bacon like someone up thread suggested and roasted would be just as good. I will def remember it when I have left over chicken.

Finally made something from Eat! It was chicken with bacon, parsnip and chick peas. Very simple, took a few minutes to get started, then sat in the oven for 45 minutes. A bit salty for me, despite omitting one of the lots of salt he recommended, but that might be due to using a stock cube instead of normal stock. Needed some bread to mop up the sauce (which I had). DH loved it, and I would make it again but with homemade stock or cider.

I love gnocchi and regularly make my own (with the DDs). The bought stuff just isn't the same (unlike pasta, which I never make).

We had marmalade chicken turkey steaks and bacon as that's the meat i had. I added an extra tablespoon of Dijon and it was very tasty. I roasted some spring onions, tomatoes, mushroom, baby pots and olives, drizzled with the juice from the turkey and added feta. Scrumptious but sure I would be better with chicken thighs.

Thanks for the get well message glorious still suffering but the mustard helped clear my sinuses :)

I love gnocchi, have never made it so if it's good pregnant I'll give it a go otherwise science can you recommend another recipe?

So, here it is- the eagerly anticipated gnocchi review

I didn't make it yesterday as I had underestimated how long it takes to cook, peel,mash and cool potatoes. I did that bit and finished the rest today (we had a chorizo and butter bean thing in a rush last night) I'm not going to lie it was labour intensive, not workday dinner stuff. But it was so so successful. Lovely light gnocchi, like you get in restaurants. Mmmm. Delicious, and dd loved making them with me. It makes plenty to feed six btw.

The sauce wasn't for me though dh really enjoyed it. IMO it was too cheese heavy, nice spread on a pizza base, but not as a sauce. Also the recipe had nothing crispy, all soft- we had a salad for the texture and to break up the richness of the cheese cheese sauce and gnocchi. Next time I'll make the gnocchi with sage butter and side salad. So glad I've found this gnocchi recipe, I've been making it all wrong, I've always managed nice but not restaurant quality, just never as light and soft as I want. This is the recipe.

Ooh thanks pregnant will give it a go then. The nicest gnocchi I've had was at the ivy it was with a lovely basil pesto and a sort of fresh tomato sauce which was slightly warm, and then I've also had it with a sage and pumpkin buttery sauce also at the ivy. I also had some gnocchi in jamies Italian which was better than ok but not good!
Could you scale down the recipe do you think?

I made good gnocchi once - but it was labour intensive! This recipe sounds great.

Have any of you tried any fish dishes from this month's books?

I don't think you can scale down as it calls for a single egg. I can't scale an egg down. But I have frozen some as google told me it's good to freeze for 3 months.

I've made Eats sea bass with waxy potatoes- Now thats a weeknight recipe!very very easy and very well received.

A large egg is generally 4tbs but make sure you whisk the egg then pour from a jug onto the tbsp for accuracy.
The sea bass does look good may try that.

My first fail from Eat this evening. Well,fail seems strong, but I will never make it again. The 'light chicken ragu' page 187. It's a pie filling masquerading as a pasta sauce. And not the best pie filling either, it's the sort of thing you make when starting out with sauces as a youth- a roux mixed with stock with the ingredients shoved in. I'm really not sure where the ragu bit comes in either. It's not a ragu. It wasn't horrible, not at all, but not nice either, if my DC had served it to me when learning to cook I would be pleased (when the time comes) but not pleased for me. What's more I knew where it was going early on and ploughed on regardless, I'm annoyed with myself. Its also texturally lacking. Though as mine didnt look like the picture perhaps I did it wrong (though the picture shows the chicken ragu, it seems slightly reddish- how? Chicken, spring onions, garlic, flour and stock- whete is the red?)Quite disappointed, I could have done something nice with those chicken breasts.

Oh dear, one to avoid by the sounds of it.

By contrast, I've just made the prawns with coconut from Eat and it was delicious. I served it with Thai sticky rice which mopped up the sauce well. It wasn't hugely filling, so I might bulk it up with some extra veg next time but otherwise I'd say it was an excellent quick recipe.

I had half the curry paste left over so I've frozen that for future use.

Eat is redeemed, the sausage meatballs are lovely. We had it with pasta as dd love pasta. I did add some shallots, and mushrooms, to incorporate a veg to the meal, it was very nice. Another easy and quick weekday meal (I was really busy today it felt like a weekday) add plenty of mustard though, it really peps it up.

So this week we're planning pork with blood orange and lentil bolognese from Eat plus the pasta al amatriciana from the Italians when I finally make it to the deli that is.

Finally made something from Eat. Had the breakfast burgers at the weekend, which were lovely although fussy dh decided he doesn't like bagels. Very easy to do and a nice alternative to our usual brunch of sausage toasties!

Also made the Irish cream coffee trifle. Think the quantities of Irish cream and coffee were wrong though, 300ml of liquid was never going to soak into 100g of sponge fingers, even half the liquid was more than enough. I also added a bit of icing sugar to the cream as my coffee was quite bitter. I think I'd rather drink the baileys and make my usual tiramisu with tia maria.

Might cook something from greedy Italians tonight, prefer the style of it over Eat.

Eat lentil bolognese here. What can I say, I wouldn't recommend it visually if you have a child in nappies It was a little worthy even after the addition of illicit red wine and we wondered why no garlic or tomato. But pleasant enough and seemed virtuous.

I've just had to re read the Bolognese recipe as I added garlic. I swear I read garlic! Then again I also added bacon, which I recommend

Mmm I can see bacon would be great. Funny, it's almost automatic to put garlic in that kind of thing isn't it

Pork in blood orange is marinating for tonight.

Randomly we're off to that ikea on Saturday so if anyone fancies a mini meet up in the cafe then let me know! DD needs a toy kitchen for her first birthday doesn't she

glorious how was the pork? I have blood oranges so am tempted, did you use sweet chilli sauce or hot chilli sauce?

Will be buying some pots to make gnocchi today, any suggestions for a sauce or shall I attempt the mozzarella one? I always find mozzarella lacking in flavour so not sure on that one.

It was really good, blood oranges made a big difference I think. It was a bit annoying having to reduce the sauce at the end though. I used hot chilli (encona) but not sure what he wanted as the chilli dominated a bit so next time I'd use less but stick with hot as I liked the fact that it wasn't too sweet.

On gnocchi, homemade pesto?