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?

Maple Pumpkin Tart, Nicola Lamb, Kitchen Projects
Took a decent amount longer to bake than advised, but was really lovely, interesting to have a pumpkin with no spices.

Winter citrus fruit salad, Alexina Anatole, Bitter
Really refreshing and simple, worth segmenting oranges for.

Spicy ginger, tomato and sesame dip - Ixta Belfrage, Mezcla
Ridiculously easy to make - especially with a food processor and so delicious. I definitely over processed it so it was more paste like, but still was amazing. I made this to bring to the family Secret Santa gathering and it was perfect for adding to a spread.

Cheesy polenta with balsamic onions - Waitrose
Quite chuffed with myself, picked up a recipe card from Waitrose and actually cooked from it!!! Very simple but delicious flavours, would make again. The missing ingredient at the bottom of this recipe is dolcelatte - when it melted it was heaven.

Ginger Cookies - Jane's Patisserie Easy Favourites
You can't go wrong with a Jane bake! These were cake like vs cookie like but still delicious. She suggests darker sugar and treacle to make these richer so I made both of those swaps and it was so worth it!

Slow-cooked chicken with a crisp corn crust, Ottolenghi, Simple
I adored this, perfect for preparing ahead and finishing off later. The corn crust was really light and complimented the rich chicken perfectly.

Lemon Tart with Basil Cream, Benjamina Ebuehi, I’ll Bring Dessert
I had a portion of sweet shortcrust in the freezer so used that for the crust. The filing was fairly simple and tasted great, it was so soft and silky that I did have trouble making my slices pretty. Basil cream was a winner.

Florentine millionaire's shortbread - Nicola Lamb
I ended up reboiling the caramel for this because I wasn't convinced it was going to firm up enough - and the end product was very good, but obviously I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't. I replaced the dried fruit with orange zest, and cut it frozen, which worked really well - no caramel leaked when cutting. I loved them.

Baci Biscuitss , Nicola Lamb, Kitchen Projects
My dough was too stiff to push through a piping bag and nozzle, perhaps my kitchen was just a bit too cold? So I gently rolled the dough into balls with my hands, then proceeded as normal only missing the pretty ridges on the sides of the cookies. These were absolutely stunning, both in appearance and taste, very eager to make these again. I fully intended to take some of these round to friends who were hosting us for dinner - but I just couldn’t part with them so they had a bottle of wine instead.

Japanese Corn Rice, Just One Cook Book
There’s not much to this recipe but it’s really lovely, I can see it being a staple.

Carrot tarte tatin, Waitrose
Wow! This looked so beautiful and tasted great, made for a simple pre-Christmas lunch with friends. Portion size is definitely more on the light lunch size, or maybe I’m greedy.

5-ingredient miso broccoli pasta - Marion's Kitchen
Great Sunday dish for when I've been out all weekend - and made extra delicious with crispy chilli oil.

Celebration Salmon, Ixta Belfrage, Mezcla
This looked so pretty and celebratory, but not my favourite Mezcla recipe and I’m not sure why as DH really rated it, I can be quite fickle with salmon though.

Sticky Coconut Rice Cakes, Ixta Belfrage, Mezcla
I was certain I would be able to find Thai sticky rice in my local Waitrose, but they didn’t have any and I’d left it too late to run to the asian supermarket or order online. I proceeded sushi rice and the flavour was amazing, even if I was missing the sticky texture. One to try again with the correct ingredients!!!

Winter salad with citrus-maple-ginger dressing - Melissa Hemsley, Feel Good
One of the recipes that reminded me why I like this book so much. Simple ingredients I mostly had in my cupboard and fairly low effort to make, but the dish was delicious. Super adaptable too.

I haven’t been cooking too much new stuff but did make Rachel Roddy’ys red pepper pasta with ricotta recently - it was delicious and super easy! Red pepper pasta

im making Nicola Lamb’s 3 day focaccia for Christmas Day - am excited!

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!
I made Nicola Lamb’s focaccia and it was amazing! It does take three days but it is an enjoyable cook - I followed the note that reminded me that kitchen conditions varied and so I went by eye/description rather than strict time rules (for me this meant things to longer to get bubbly and jiggly as I had a cooler kitchen - but was all very chill (in the relaxed sense)

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! I was in charge of puds this year, and was really happy with them
Danish rice pudding (Risalamande) with salted almond brittle and sour sumac cherries - Ottolenghi
This was the Christmas pudding I was most excited about this year and it more than lived up to it. Perfect for the big day as it can all be made in advance. Every part of this worked so well together.

Matcha basque cheesecake - Alexina Anatole, Bitter
Another Christmas pudding which not only can be made in advance but benefits from it. Really simple to make and put together and so good. I did turn the oven temperature up for the last five minutes and it was wonderful and dark on top.

Chocolate malt custard - Benjamina Ebeui, I’ll Bring Dessert
I think either I’m more cautious with custard than recipe writers, or low on my stove is lower than low on theirs, but this was another custard which promised to thicken in around five minutes, but I was stirring away for the best part of half an hour. Worth the stirring though, the result was incredible.

Cheese Stars, Nigella Lawson
My dough was really quite crumbly, I was half tempted to add a tbsp of water, but was able to work with it. The biscuits were really nice!

Ricotta, Hazelnut and Marmalade Choc Chip Cake, Nicola Lamb, Sift
Also coming in with a Christmas dessert, as a Terrys super-fan chocolate and orange is intrinsically festive to me. One of the more simple recipes in this book, a crowd pleaser and less heavy than a traditional Christmas pud.

Similarly to @SummaLuvin I had a go at the Baci Biscuits by Nicola Lamb - I also had issues with the dough getting through a piping nozzle so also rolled the dough into balls and did a thumb print dip. They were really easy to pull together and so delicious!

Spicy Sausage Stew, Rosie MacKean
Stunning winter warmer, exactly what the cold snap was calling out for.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201123221354/cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021593-caramelized-onion-galette" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Caramelised onion galette - Sue Li, NYT
One of those meals that can’t not be delicious and it didn’t disappoint. Takes a while to caramelise the onions (and I took longer than the recipe suggested) but totally worth it.

French chicory, roquefort + walnut salad - Alexina Anatole, Bitter
Served alongside the gale and it was a great accompaniment and really delicious salad. The bitter crunchiness worked perfectly. I subbed the roquefort for ricotta and I think the creaminess of the cheese was needed.

Banana bread - Felicity Cloake
I’m not loyal at all to banana bread recipes and chose this one entirely because it used the amount of bananas I needed to use. I really enjoyed it, and will probably be adding walnuts to all banana bread from now on.

Vegetable and parmesan soup - Yotam Ottolenghi
I did take the chicken out of a chicken soup, so can’t claim much loyalty to the recipe, but I really enjoyed this even without the main ingredient! A delicious and light but warming soup for a cold day.

Spice mince and chips Meliz - Dinner Tonight. Whilst this was really good it wasn’t as good as other dishes in this book. I feel many of the other dishes I’ve tried from this book have exceeded my expectations but the met my expectations.

Chicken and Pistachio curry - Meera Sodha. This was just what I felt I needed this weekend, it was so good and full of flavour. The pistachios add a richness and depth that felt a real treat. This could easily be served to friends - prepare a day in advance to help mature the flavours,

Yogurt Flatbreads - a very very simple recipe, I had some Greek yogurt leftover from Christmas so made these with an addition of chopped chilli. Perfect. Would definitely make again.

Rhubarb Crumble Muffins, BBC Good Food
Spotted some bright pink rhubarb when I was doing the food shop and couldn't resist. These were very easy and incredibly delicious. It does look as though you're making too much crumble but be generous with the topping if you decide to make them. Served with custard they really hit the spot!

Prawn Pathia, Kitchen Sanctuary
This really satisfied my craving for a pathia I used to get from my (no longer) local curry house - it tasted just right and worked really well with prawns and green beans in place of chicken.

Rice Cooker Adobo Chicken Rice, Kyrié the Foodie
The TikTok algorithm knew what it was doing when it showed me this recipe and it really hit the spot. Served with stir-fry green beans in a tahini dressing.

Perfect Sheperds Pie, Felicity Cloake, The Guardian
My first ever shepherds (or cottage) pie so Felicity was my first port of call. I really enjoyed this, a proper classic - the carrots and onions provide a surprising amount of sweetness to the mince layer.

Hot Berry Sponge, Rosie Mackean
The positive of the relentless cold weather is the excuse to make this sort of warming dessert, being made of freezer/cupboard staples and fairly low effort add to the appeal. Stunning dessert, really well balanced, though really quite generous in portion size.

Teriyaki sauce - Marion’s Kitchen
Not much to say really, just a good teriyaki sauce recipe.

Mac and Cheese - made this classic using Felicity Cloakes recipe. Very tasty with a couple of small extras including mustard and nutmeg (of course) to amp up the flavour.

Lamb Ragu with Pappardelle Lamb Ragu with Pappardelle Lamb Ragu with Pappardelle Lamb Ragu with Pappardelle - totally delicious midweek meal- very flavoursome would be great with a think of focaccia.

Sweet Potato and Smoky Black Bean Enchiladas Sweet Potato and Smoky Black Bean Enchiladas Sweet Potato and Smoky Bkack Bean Enchiladas - really tasty dish. The recipe suggests using 6” corn tortillas, I could only get 8” ones. I made 5 but admittedly they were very well filled. I made the accompanying enchilada sauce with tin tomatoes, garlic, cumin, cinnamon and a little sugar. It tastes so much fresher than a shop bought jar.

Vegan Bolognese from Slow by Gennaro Contaldo, which was absolutely delicious. Reminded me of how I used to make a vegetarian lasagne back in the 90s.

I also made two recipes from the January Sainsburys magazine this week that were lovely and I would be happy to make again: Vietnamese-style Fish with Noodles and a Chicken, 'Nduja & Butter Bean One Pot. The latter should have been made with chicken thighs as per the recipe, but it was still delicious and I have half of it now frozen.

Cheesy tater tots with Thai green curry sauce - Marions Kitchen
I had really high expectations for this because I love Thai curry, I love cheese and and I love potatoes but I was underwhelmed. The texture was a bit soft throughout which wasn’t super pleasant. Maybe because the only potato in the supermarket in vaguely the right form were massive potato croquettes so there was less crispy inside to crispy outside ad I also didn’t; deep fry them. I still like the concept, so maybe switching the sauce to a dipping sauce so to reduce contact time might help.

Crying tiger butter - Marions Kitchen
Really delicious - I didn’t add the coriander to the butter but left it for garnish. Next time I’d make the full batch and have the rest of the butter in the freezer - because I scaled down this time.

Apple Crumble Muffins - Jane’s Patisserie Celebrate
Really simple and delicious. When I was making them, I thought the crumble topping was way too much and didn’t use all of it, but looking at them baked and risen, they could have handled more.

Miso Pasta Sauce with Cannellini Beans and Leeks, Emilie Pullar
Fantastic, but I could easily double the amount of leeks!

Rice Paper Dumplings
Saw something like this on TikTok about a month ago, no idea which creator, but it’s been on my mind since and found this recipe on google. The premise is adaptable and I wasn’t that faithful to the recipe. Really recommend for people like me who love summer rolls in hot weather, but then push the rice paper to the back of the cupboard over winter.

Bailey's Bundt Cake
My MIL made this over Christmas and I had to ask for the recipe as it was so delicious. I did 2/5 of the recipe and baked in a loaf tin which was perfect for just DH and me to finish over a weekend, the decent amount of cornflour makes for a really tender crumb. Perfect for using up some of the Sahula (a disappointing Amarula copy) we picked up in Lidl.