Weekly new recipe thread

[SarahJessicaParkin]

I've decided to try out a brand new recipe every week this year. I seem to make the same things on rotation all the time, so hope this will drag me out of my recipe rut and improve my not great cooking skills!

Would anyone like to join me?

Making dinner for a friend this eve but struggling for inspiration. Ideally something that doesn't take too long to rustle together, chicken based. Will have a gander on here!

Spinachy Lentils and Tamarind Paneer - Sophie Wyburd, Tucking In
I've potentially misremembered the recipe name here, but essentially a daal with tamarind paneer. I've not made a daal this way before - cooked lentils for 30 mins in lots of water, blitzed half of them with spinach and some cooked onions and added it back to the other lentils. Really nice flavour, but I don't tend to commit to a daal, I'll just make another next time. The addition of the paneer was nice as a topper, just marinaded in spices and grilled in cubes, I'd definitely make it again to top a daal.

Butter Beans alla Vodka, Carolina Gelen, Pass the Plate
Perfect for bougie beans on toast. ‘Alla vodka’ isn’t revolutionary, but it is reliably delicious and I’m happy to be encouraged to make it under the guise of trying a new recipe.

Steamy Roasted Cabbage with Crispy Garlic Pistachio Oil, Carolina Gelen, Pass the Plate
Absolute banger, I love roasted cabbage and this elevated it without much more effort.

Pumpkin Ginger Cake with Sage Caramel, Benjamina Ebuehi
Benjamina just gets cake, her recipes are truly wonderful. This cake was really easy, only needing a bowl and a whisk - I spent longer gathering ingredients than making the batter. The topping was a little more effort with both the cream cheese frosting and sage caramel, but well worth it.

West African Peanut Stew - Rachel Ama, Vegan Eats
Not revolutionary but nice and simple, and warming for this time of year. I often have trouble softening root vegetables when simmering in thicker sauces, but this worked perfectly for me.

Spiced Potato Rolls - Sophie Wyburd, Tucking In.
Sorry link doesn’t contain recipe, just an image of the food. A cross between a samosa and a vegetarian sausage roll, absolutely delicious!! The addition of the lime pickle really hit the spot. I think Tucking In is my cookbook of the year…

I then played with Edd Kimbers latest book, Small Batch Cookies, for the first time. His Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies were my favourite of the three I made, so dark with an amazing chilli kick at the end of a bite. Will definitely make these again. I think I’d prefer them chewier so I’ll knock 2/3 mins off the cooking time next time. (sorry no recipe online, think rich dark cookie with a marshmallow in the middle and a spicy kick).

Apple Cider Doughnut Cookies - with all of Edd’s recipes they were very easy to make with mostly store cupboard baking ingredients. I was really pleased how much of the apple flavour came through.

Salted Caramel Pretzel Thumbprints - a plain dough, rolled in pretzels with a thumbprint well for a dollop of caramel topped with sea salt. I potentially overworked these as they were quite short, really great though!

White Chicken Chilli, Melissa Hemsley, Real Healthy
I’ve been curious about white chilli for a while and I really enjoyed this, it felt gentle and nourishing and really hearty. I know Americans categorise standard chills as soup, which I disagree with firmly, but this actually was a soup! I only diverted from the recipe to remove the chicken skin after the initial browning, laid on a baking sheet, and baked to crisp up - a far superior use than discarding after poaching for 35 minutes, crispy chicken skin is one of the great joys of life (for meat-eaters).

Lentils with caramelised onion aïoli and crispy chilli oil, Ixta Belfrage, Mezcla
Such a hit, when I was making it I worried the lentils would be a bit bland, but with the accompaniments it made for a really tasty meal. I did take about double the suggested time to get my onions nicely caramelised. I wonder about using Ixtas curried onions here as a fun variant.

hearty spiced veg stew with toasted almonds - Melissa Hemsley, Feel Good
A really nice template of recipe. It does exactly what it’s promises, it’s heart and filling.

Farinata - Melissa Hemsley, Feel Good
Mine was probably a bit overdone on the edges, but since I’ve never had it before I have nothing to compare it to! Really nice way to use up my very underutilised chickpea flour.

Chilli paneer Korean style - Meera Sodha, Dinner
A meal with paneer, gochujang and short grain rice is pretty much guaranteed to make me happy and predictably this one did.

Tarte Tatin using the Raymond Blanc recipe https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/tarte-tatin

Started at about 7pm .

Made this thing with the spare puff pastry based on a thing I saw on Facebook .that's out of date frozen strawberry. It looks horrendous but hopefully taste edible (I'm getting a sensitive image warning ⚠️ 😉)

Caramelised white chocolate and macadamia cookies - Comfort, Ottolenghi. Whilst these were very moreish I did replace the macadamia for cashews and … I didn’t read that I should have ground the oats. Clearly this affected the consistency of the baked cookie, I would try again and make them properly next time,

Chicken with Steph’s spice - Comfort, Ottolenghi. This was right up my street, full of flavour and delicious spices with a little sweetness in the background. Though it was great as it was I feel it would work really well on a barbecue, for the vegetarians I would serve it basted on a cauliflower steak.

I'm having a bit of a moment with sprouts. This is my current favourite:

dont leave us hanging

Oh no! My laptop crashed and I forgot I was in the middle of posting!

This is my current favourite: Chili Crisp Brussels Sprouts but I really like this one too:

Perfect Parkin, Felicity Cloake, The Guardian
Very much influenced by last weeks bake-off. Really nice, and doesn’t taste that sweet despite all the sugar, treacle, and syrup, excited to seem how it develops as I hear it improves as the weeks go on.

Malted chocolate custard, Benjamina Ebuehi, I’ll Bring Dessert
This caught my eye but I didn’t fancy having 4 egg whites over, so I tried it with 1 whole egg instead which worked just fine. I really liked this.

Harissa, Mascarpone and Oregano Sausage Ragù, The Monday Pasta Club
Posted by @Pompoms88 and was a lovely simple yet tasty pasta dish.

‘Strange flavour’ spinach and peas - Yotam Ottolenghi
Sadly I didn't have any coriander when I made this but still enjoyed it. I halved it as a side for two, and it was a very large side! The sauce was great, and I enjoyed, but will try again with the coriander.

Sea bass with pul biber and Nutty herby brown rice and lentils - Dinner Tonight, Meliz Berg. This was such straightforward meal that worked so well together, the rice and lentils were.as good as Meliz promised. Although we had the sea bass over two nights, the first night I served it with new potatoes and vegetables tossed in the buttery juices of the fish. This evening I made the lentil and rice dish and it was every bit as delicious - next time I’ll increase the quantities (rice & lentil dish) as I think it would be good served cold for lunch the next day.

Harira
just delicious
Moroccan harira - Good Food Middle East

Tavuk Döner - Meliz Berg, Meliz Cooks
As a pescatarian I'm not confident cooking meat, that said this was a super easy one tin dish - essentially marinade the chicken, put it in the oven and baste / flip a couple of times. It had lots of compliments from the meat eaters so was super chuffed. I served alongside her Chopped Salad which I've made a few times and is delicious.

Lasagne Aubergine Melanzane - Mary Berry, Mary's Foolproof Dinners
I caught a bit of Mary's new TV show and thought this looked really good. Sadly I was really disappointed, it was very average - DP agreed. I wanted more cheese and more pasta! That said i'm not a fan of overly tomato dishes so the dislike might be on me moreso than the recipe.

three new ones from me....

Georgina Hayden one pot chicken with oregano and lemon and rice
This was delicious and super easy and is clearly a summer recipe but it worked for us on autumnal night! The feta/yoghurt sauce is a banger!

Amatriciana Minestrone collab
I belatedly joined the Sophie Wyburd train and am now on for the ride!. This was soo delicious and easy and relaxed to make - absolutely on rotation and we're not a soupy household!

onion, anchovy & chickpea gratin - Sophie W (TikTok link)
This is also available as part of her free offering in substance. I adored this - although I went a bit overboard on the anchovies (not a sentence I'd ever think I would be typing) However, my DH said it was a bit rich and 'if he ate a lot he'd expect to develop gout' - again this is something unusual to come out of his mouth. Sophie says its good to serve with a roast in which case I think this would serve quite a few. To counteract the pending gout, a stringent salad would work with it as a main course. As an aside, I just can't ever get my onions to look like this - i need an onion cooking intervention!

Smoked Haddock, Potatoes, Cream & Thyme - Gelf Anderson
This was absolutely delicious and one I would make again. So comforting for Autumn/Winter.

Garlicky Mushroom Gnocchi (Tesco) was pretty tasty and really easy throw-it-together type weeknight dinner. It ticked all my "need to eat xyz leftovers" box.

A surprise hit was the Smoky Carrot & Chickpea traybake (BBC Good Food) which had so much flavour for what seemed like such a simple dish.

Beans alla Vodka
I used the recipe from Bold Bean Co - which doesn't appear on their website (there is a chickpea alla vodka on there) but @SummaLuvin posted the same dish from another website. I had some bacon rashers that needed using so added them and served with a stringent rocket salad and some garlic bread - so simple, so delicious!

Spiced Pumpkin Buns, Nicola Lamb, Sift
Wow, these were stunning, as was the butter. If anyone is attending a Thanksgiving potluck in a couple of weeks I highly recommend these.

Lentils With Caramelized Onion Aioli and Crispy Chile Oil - Ixta Belfrage - Mezcla
So much easier than I expected when I first saw it and really delicious. Ixta always caramelises onions suspiciously quickly - but other than that it comes together so quickly. The leftover onion, aioli and chilli oil made a delicious toastie the next day as well! I think I’ll copy Summa in trying this with the caramelised onions in future.

Cherry clafoutis - Marcus Wareing
Ive never made a clafoutis before and finally got around to making one and it didn’t disappoint. I cheated and used frozen cherries, because pitting all the cherries needed wasn’t what I wanted for a quick ish Sunday pudding.

Cherry baked oatmeal
Finding uses for my leftover frozen cherries! I went through a massive baked oatmeal phase in lockdown 1 and haven't had it since. Just a nice, low effort breakfast. I don't really have much loyalty to baked oatmeal recipes though - or at least I haven't found the one yet.

Tahini chicken schnitzel, Ottolenghi
Really delicious, an absolute winner, worth the extra effort.

Chili Crisp Brussels Sprouts, The Kitchn
Recommended by @AnnieKenney, I had used up all my panko breadcrumbs on the schnitzel so had to skip them, I enjoyed these anyway but plan to make properly at some point.

Roast Chicken with Beer Butter Onions, Alexina Anatole, Bitter
So easy and tasty, perfect for a slow Sunday. We have leftover chicken that we freeze for another time as it was just DH & me, that also meant we got plenty of the shallots each, if I was serving to the 3-4 people the recipe is written for I might be tempted to increase these.

Smoked Mackerel Toasties was a really delicious and quick meal. Took about 10 mins to assemble and whack in the George Foreman. So good, I had it for dinner then lunch the next day.

Ham & Pea Gnocchi Traybake was another lovely and quick dinner, and used up some leftover gammon. The recipe was in the BBC Good Food magazine but I can't find it online. Similar to this one but it had leeks in it.