June Cookery Book Club - Summers finally here

[Pantah630]

Summer is upon us at least for a few days so get your BBQs out and start planning your outdoor menus, with Nigellas Summer and Delia's Summer Collection or any other Summery recipes you can find. I think I may have a Bill Granger lurking on my bookshelf.

McKayz we tend to eat mainly Greek/Middle Eastern in the summer so anything similar would be good. Tonia Buxton has a new book out Eat Greek for a Week which looks good or there are a wealth of recipes online, if you follow her on FB she's putting recipe s from the book up too.

Thanks. I'll have a look for that.

Is a nectarine cake a summer recipe? I had a punnet that were too sour to eat. So I made this cake today

dianahenry.co.uk/recipes/rhubarb-cake/

Nectarine is one of the suggested alternatives. I didn't peel the nectarines and used half the amount of sugar for the fruit (ie 2.5 tbsp). Otherwise made it exactly as in the recipe. It's the best cake I've had for a long time. So good and so summery.

The recipe is also in cook simple, btw.

A bit late signing in this month, but I'm here now :)

HeadDreamer that cake looks amazing. Sadly (or maybe not, I guess), it would only be me who would eat it here, so I doubt I'd do it. Kind of thing I'd order if I was having tea and cake out.

Oh sod it, maybe I'll make it anyway

I did Nigella's aubergine rolls today. Very good. The flavours work as well as you would imagine - creamy salty feta, chilli and mint. Couldn't really taste the lemon now I think about it. They were also very moist, verging on dribbly, which was fine for eating on your own, but if you were entertaining you should maybe gently pat the aubergines dry before rolling. But not too much as to squeeze all the liquid out.

Planning on the rice paper rolls tomorrow, with the dipping sauce she recommends, then using the leftovers of that to make the black rice in Friday.
I'm on a roll - hope it comes to fruition

I bought a griddle pan especially for the aubergines today, so need to find more (veggie) griddle-based recipes

There is no way I could convince DD1 to eat either aubergine rolls or rice rolls. However she is very good with cakes. There is no doubt they will all disappear before the weekend. Even my 8mo are some of the nectarine cake today because DD1 insisted.

maybe one day DD1 will develop a more sophisticated palate.

At least DH is always game to try new food.

A couple of weeks ago, I made the Vietnamese prawn baguettes from Nigel slater's eat. I thought at least DD1 would eat the bread. She loves bread. No, she refused to even try it. Even a baguette is too foreign for her. I couldn't believe it.

Oh no, no one else is eating any of the food I'm making!! I do it for my lunch when the kids are at school

DH was at home yesterday lunchtime, ate his sandwiches as I ate my aubergine rolls, asked politely what it was I was eating and grimaced more with each ingredient he didn't like the sound of!! He is great at Thai/Chinese/Indian, but definitely does not do aubergines!

I don't think he would like the texture of the rice paper rolls either, though DS (4) would possibly have a go, I may try him one day next week.

But at least all of these things are scale-downable for one person. A rhubarb cake = a rhubarb cake, which would mean me eating a whole cake. Admittedly I could make it last a week, but still. Plus it would be noticed by others in the household that I have cake and they don't, so I'd have to make them a cake

huveos if you are local, I would drop you a piece of the cake.

When it was just me and DH, I halved cake recipes and used a 15cm tin. (I bought from either Lakeland or John Lewis). But that would still be a lot for 1 person. And like you say then you have to make 2 cakes. Now I always make the full amount as DD1 loves cake.

We tried the rice paper rolls last time, DH not impressed but both DSs loved them. I doubt I'd be able to make a cake last a week Huevos, even without the ravaging hoardes in our house tucking in

The Nigella aubergine rolls are lovely - I made them the other day too. V summery.

I also made the lamb and hummus but made my own hummus... And made her cacik which is essentially a kind of tsatsiki but I made about a quarter of her recipe and forgot to scale down the raw garlic so it was a bit garlicky.

I bought this book when it first came out 13 years ago (!) and tried a lot then. I used to make the beef lettuce wraps as starters a lot. I also liked the prawn and black rice salad. The chicken pilaf was a bit dry I thought but that might have been due to downscaling wrongly too.

I fancy trying the Gina cocktail and the Fragonard....

The Nigella aubergine rolls are lovely - I made them the other day too. V summery.

I also made the lamb and hummus but made my own hummus... And made her cacik which is essentially a kind of tsatsiki but I made about a quarter of her recipe and forgot to scale down the raw garlic so it was a bit garlicky.

I bought this book when it first came out 13 years ago (!) and tried a lot then. I used to make the beef lettuce wraps as starters a lot. I also liked the prawn and black rice salad. The chicken pilaf was a bit dry I thought but that might have been due to downscaling wrongly too.

I fancy trying the Gina cocktail and the Fragonard....

I know I'm a month late but I attempted falafel from Jerusalem yesterday and it was a disaster. It wouldn't stay together.

Headdreamer
Just made that cake you linked to and used a combination of apricots and nectarines. I'm gluten free so used 100g gluten free self raising flour and 125g ground almonds. It is delicious bit disappointed that my fruit sunk to the bottom so you can't really see it but the taste is great!

Heeelp we have people coming for lunch on Sunday, hardly any time between now and then, and no idea what to cook!

Lamb shawarma, glorious!

Or what about that Indian roast chicken from MiI, glorious, that seemed to be popular? And it's a bit different from "just a roast chicken", but (presumably) not much more effort?

McKayz that's a real shame about the falafel :(
I usually use the Felicity Cloake version, but that only seems to differ in that it uses broad beans as well as chick peas, there's no extra binding agent. Did you squeeze them quite hard into shape? And let them chill?

I wasn't feeling too good on Thursday, so nothing got made :(

But yesterday I did Nigella's black rice salad with vietnamese dressing - a veggie version of course :)
It was really lovely :) I have saved the remaining sauce for the rice paper rolls on Monday (for anyone interested in doing a veggie version, I used Korean "soy sauce for soup" instead of fish sauce; it is more savoury than Chinese soy sauce, and worked really well)
I topped the rice with avocado, as Nigella suggested, then got carried away and added cubed fried tofu (for protein and texture) and griddled courgette strips (because I love my new griddle pan - this added a nice juiciness which I guess would be similar to the prawns, and a charred flavour which worked really well)
I will definitely be making it again. Not quite sure I had the right rice - didn't say Nanking on it, in fact said very little! I got it from my local Asian shop, thinking it was black glutinous rice, wanted it for something from Plenty More. Well, it's definitely not glutinous! But it worked very well in this recipe, was a lovely purple colour when cooked, with the texture of brown rice :)

HeadDreamer thank you for the offer of cake!
Please don't any of you be under the illusion that DH and the two DCs dont eat cake - it's just that they won't eat cake with fruit in
Saying that, the favourite here is lemon drizzle, which is on it's way to a fruity cake, I guess.

Ooh good ideas, will consult. I think I'm set on the honey semi freddo from Nigeria summer with Jerusalem tahini cookies for pudding.

glorious just popped in to say Schwarma too.

mckayz am making honey & co falafel this evening, they say that it doesn't work with tinned chickpeas, must use dried and soaked ones. Which did you use? Fingers crossed these work as I've never made them before, there are three recipes, I'm thinking of doing the jerusalem version with cinnamon and sesame seeds.

I used dried ones that I had soaked.

Huevos, I didn't chill them after shaping them as the recipe didn't say to do that. Will try that next time.

Crikey they're good, I could have eaten the lot but the others got there first! Given the advice upthread I did chill just to be on safe side but the mixture was quite wet so I think they would have been ok without. I did the jerusalem style falafels from H&Co with cinnamon and sesame, they were honestly, the best falafels I've tasted. Given my experience with them is from the chiller cabinet, those little Yarden frozen ones and from the falafel place near Shaftesbury Ave that's no surprise. We had tahini dip, bulgar with pistachio and apricots from the same book too, oh and some calamari.

I made the Italian Beetroot Salad from Nigella Summer yesterday - highly recommend!

Thanks everyone! Thought about shcwarma but we had lamb last week so in the end we had:
Musabaha (from Jerusalem, hummus, chickpeas and tahini and lemon sauces)
Little cheese filo rolls from our Turkish shop
Turkish bread
chicken with clementines and arak from Jerusalem with a green salad
Tahini cookies (Jerusalem )
Honey semi freddo from Nigeria summer. V easy, tasty but a bit eggy and I'd make sure to use strong honey.

All the cooking except frying the cheese rolls and baking the marinated chicken was done the night before, so it was very low stress, which was what we needed.

*^$@!! Phone. Nigella.

Sounds lovely glorious did you find arak in the Turkish shop? Or use Pernod/ouzo? And does it need it as I have none but fancied making that recipe.