Recipe review club

[GlumyGloomer]

I love trying out new recipes, and thought it would be fun to have a thread where we try stuff out and report back. Source must be cited and link provided if online. Photos encouraged.

Tonight I'll be making asian aubergine wedges, from Nadiya Hussain's Time to Eat book.
I like the taste of aubergine but have grave doubts about the texture. Still, I'm being brave and giving this a go.
Worth noting that I leave the chilli out of everything so that the dd's can eat it (I add at the table).

Anyone fancy joining me? (Waits for tumbleweed...)

Just back from a week's holiday, so I've not been doing much cooking! Yesterday I made courgette and tahini dip. There was a lot of water in the courgette obviously, so the dip is a bit thin... would probably be better to drain it after roasting. It's ok, nothing special, but it used up 2 sad looking courgettes!
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/courgette-tahini-dip

@GlumyGloomer Poached egg :-

@Imicola I'm jealous about your holiday!
Looks like another problem with the BBC GF magazine. Depends what I'm making, but I sometimes split courgettes lengthwise & scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon as that's the watery part.

Lots of instant type food here at the moment, as both dc are snotty and not giving me much time.
Not a recipe but to cheer up the kids we had retro ice cream sundaes for pudding tonight, complete with whipped cream and cherry. I have to say I really enjoyed it myself too

@GlumyGloomer oh lovely!
Tonight I made kimchi sesame udon noodles but with a few substitutes of the veg (asparagus and pepper rather than broccoli and radish). It was ok, not hugely flavoursome but I probably didn't have enough kimchi as it was the end if the jar. Very quick and easy, and pretty healthy though, which is always a win!
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/kimchi-sesame-udon-noodles

Tonight we had roasted squash with halloumi and flatbread. I used pre made homemade chilli jam in place of making the beetroot chilli jam. Super easy, and surprisingly tasty, although I felt it could have done with a bit more substance. Maybe wedges with it or something. Toddler said no, apart from a bit of the flatbread.
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/squash-halloumi-flatbreads-with-sweet-chilli-beetroot-jam#commentsFeed

Oh, I might give the squash one a go. I love halloumi and it's always good to have more veggie meals.

The halloumi recipe looks delicious @Imicola! I might have to have some halloumi for lunch now you've made me think about it...

Hope everyone in your house is feeling better @GlumyGloomer?

I have found myself with loads of sausages to use up - going to try this toad in the hole recipe to get rid of some leeks too!

Thanks Clara, colds mostly recovered from, teething now in the mix but that's life.
I tried a mushroom toad in the hole a while back which wasn't great, but mushrooms are wetter than leeks.
We're still living on convenience food/stuff from the freezer while I try to get the house less abysmal ahead of my parents coming to visit on friday.
Today's lunch was batch 2/3 of the not popular Nigella Express sweetcorn chowder. To cheer everyone up I made bread and butter pudding to follow, which worked well. Didn't have double cream, so I used 250ml single with 150ml milk.
In other news: Dh got a job! Hopefully bolognese back on the menu soon...

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/breadandbutterpuddin_85936

Made this sticky pork meatloaf today. I wasn't convinced but my husband and toddler seemed happy enough. It was a bit too salty and the glaze was thin and there was too much of it, so it all ended up soaked down around it in the tin. I did like the crunch added by the water chestnuts though. With a bit of a tweak it might be a winner, but I probably wouldn't bother making it again.

Woo, congrats to @GlumyGloomer s DH! Mine also got a new job recently. Must be something in the air!

www.sainsburysmagazine.co.uk/recipes/mains/sticky-pork-meatloaf

Congratulations to Mr Imicola too! It's obviously the season for it.

For dinner I made the Nadiya marmalade haddock (a failure), only instead of the marmalade crumb I used the garlic crumb topping from her fish hoop bake (also a failure), and ocado sent me cod instead of haddock. The whole family ate it! I've either stumbled onto the magic formula of an easy fish dish they'll actually eat, or it was a fluke brought on by astral alignment/5G/they've been replaced with stepford robots. Either way I needed a win today

I made this chicken dish from a Pinch Of Nom yesterday pinchofnom.com/recipes/chicken-breast-with-balsamic-cherry-tomatoes-and-mozzarella/

Really nice and easy but I’m a bit wary of their multiplication factor for doubling the recipe - 200ml of balsamic vinegar seemed way too much so I didn’t use it all.

DH's birthday tomorrow, so I made this cherry and lemon cake: www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/marys_cherry_cake_17869
I used a Savarin mould. Many years ago, in a different life, I used this and it was fine. Since getting it back out of storage I've used it twice and both times the cake has broken on the way out. I don't know what I'm doing wrong? I greased it, let it cool for ten minutes first. I have no idea why it's suddenly not working.
So poor Dh has a broken cake, and I shall have to do my best to stick it back together with icing (only he doesn't like too much icing so there's limits to what I can do).
I only hope tomorrow's steak goes better...

Oh no, that's disappointing @GlumyGloomer although my cakes usually have some sort of issue like that, mainly because im a bit impatient I think! Im sure it will taste great regardless!

@Wildernesstips sounds interesting. I usually go for thighs rather than breast and can then never work out what to do with breast if I do have it, so I may file that one away for another day!

I've got a pile of cooking apples slowly going soft, so I'll probably make a cake with them this weekend.

Easily the worst looking cake I have ever presented someone with, but it tasted nice enough. More importantly I managed not to overcook the steak, and the cheese topping went down very well.
www.pillsbury.com/recipes/cheese-topped-steaks/3aa7ca4a-d8f6-4107-9a62-2848dfbf13a3

Hope you don't mind me jumping in. I've very recently decided to go more plant based for health reasons and I've got excited about cooking again. I made Escalivada: slow roasted peppers, aubergines & tomatoes with a basil and almond dressing from The Green Roasting Tin cookbook by Rukmini Iyer. The recipe is the one on the cover page.

It was really delicious and was sunshine on a plate, very cheery on a depressing day. I had it with wholegrain rice and DP had it with baguette. The only thing thing I would change is to try it with different nuts (cashews?) rather than almonds because the almonds had such a strong flavour.

@GlumyGloomer looks good considering!

@PlantBasedWoman welcome! Sounds interesting, particularly the dressing. I have a lot of basil seedlings coming up, so might be worth a try!

This afternoon I made a spiced apple cake from a recipe I cut out of a magazine many years ago. I wasn't convinced with the recipe as I made it, it seemed far too dry, so I added a bit of milk away the end. It actually came out really well though and the clove and nutmeg mix gives it a really nice flavour. Takeaway for us tonight...!

@PlantBasedWoman I could certainly do with some sunshine on a plate!!

I love a spiced apple cake @Imicola I made a banana upside down cake yesterday which was yummy, but it doesn't keep well, really needs to be eaten inside a day.

A shame about the broken cake @GlumyGloomer but I'm sure it was still very tasty!

Tonight we had a pork katsu curry with rice and peas. I was planning to use a good food recipe, but was put off by some bad reviews, so I ended up going for a hybrid of 2 different recipes, with the pork from the good food recipe and the sauce from the happy foodie. Just used normal rice. It was ok, I felt it was a bit bland (but perhaps that's just katsu curry generally), but the toddler wolfed it down and DH also seemed to like it, so I'd probably make it again. I probably would try the bbc recipe in full next time though.
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/katsu-pork-sticky-rice
thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/chicken-katsu-curry

Oh, I love a katsu curry.
Hello @PlantBasedWoman! We're sort of trying to reduce meat consumption, but it's not easy with the assortment of fussy eating habits we have. We still eat a lot of chicken.
Today I made a Nadiya English muffin bake, and a maccaroni cheese for the freezer. I think the thing I love most about the time to eat book is the way you're always making more than one meal.
The muffin bake was nice, but not nice enough to win over my generally bread hating family, sigh. Looking forward to the maccaroni cheese though.

@GlumyGloomer any recommended recipes for a katsu sauce? What's a muffin bake? Sounds intriguing, but I find NH recipes hard to guess at! I've just got family favourites from the library.

@Imicola erm...S&B medium golden curry sauce I've never made the sauce from scratch, although I may give it a go in the future.
The muffin bake is english muffins filled with cheese and sun dried tomato paste, stacked in a loaf tin, covered in cheese sauce and baked in the oven. Much as I love Nadiya if you're going for a baked bready type dish I'd recommend Nigella's croque Monsieur bake as being superior. (That one is basically ham and mustard sandwiches soaked in and egg/milk mix overnight and then baked.)

@GlumyGloomer oof, that sounds good...both of those infact. The toddler LOVES anything bread related, and cheese, so pretty sure she'd wolf those down!

Nothing adventurous here today, just some almond shortbread from a random book i have. The mix was a bit too short (i.e. it crumbled alot!) But they were ok...a handy quick recipe for which i had all the ingredients.

Almond shortbread sounds nice, and I love it when I can be spontaneous because I have all the ingredients.
On Thursday is dd1's birthday party. I've not hosted anything in forever, so I'm both excited and terrified. Until then we're mostly living off frozen meals and really basic stuff.
Wednesday I'm making my first fatless cake (with cup cakes as back up incase it's a disaster). Last year's cake was not great, so I'm hoping this one works out better. Either way there will be photos.