I've just made Ministry of Food spag bol, and I'm not impressed

[bran]

Those of you who have made quite a few things from MoF can you tell me is this just a duff recipe and therefore it's worth my while trying a few others, or is it fairly typical of the whole book in which case it's just not to my taste.

I thought it was fairly bland and tasteless, and it may just be that my palate is used to stronger flavours than JO caters to in this book.

speaking of Nigella, when will one of these hot-shots produce a cookbook with low-fat recipes? Nigella & Delia use a ton of butter and/or oil in their recipes. Making food taste good without cream, butter, wine, salt, sugar, etc would be a challenge.

I've made his chicken with parma ham that he cooked in the football stadium - delicious and not at all bland.

So far we have tried:

Korma- very nice but DP wasnt so keen

Classsic tomato spaghetti- quite nice would have again.

Macaroni cheesebake- quite nice

Leek and potato soup although I did spice it up and change the recipe abit- delicious.

Chilli con carne- quite bland and lacking something,

one cup pancakes- bit stodgy

His chilli is bland too I use his chilli/spag bol recipes as a base and add the stuff i've always added to each as well.

How To Eat has a section on low-fat food or at least Nigella's version of it!

cariboo - Ruth Watson (the hotel inspector) did a really good diet book called Fat Girl Slim. It's a wierd mix of difficult (poncey) recipes and brilliant easy ones, and all diet-friendly. Some of the recipes have become regulars for us.

We completely revamped the Hamilton squash filling, and it is much better - used chunks of chorizo, dumped the squash seeds, etc etc.

Yep Nigella's low fat bit in How to eat is good, but I live by How To Eat and find it easy to substitute or leave out the butter and cream in her other recipes.

Try Nigella's chilli con carne, promise not bland and promise suitable for kids. All I do is make a batch, take out the kids portions and then chuck in chilli flakes for me and DH.

It's more flavoursome than bland without the chilli flakes though.

i think anchovies are pretty salty too, tbh. but oh yum you need them.

bran that recipe sounds fine... i think with the addition of a bay leaf, some red wine, an anchovy and three hours' cooking you'd have been well away.

I think part of the problem is if you're used to using jarred sauces, etc, then food cooked from scratch can seem bland; jarred/tinned stuff is often overflavoured and really salty.

It's partly about re-training our palates.

But I would also add red wine and cook for ages, as Aitch suggests!

oh i never use jars and i never add salt. (apart from the anch, obv). my palate is so retrained that i feel a bit GAAAAAH in restaurants if the chef's a bit heavy on the Maldon.

Can vouch for that. Aitch looked positively askance at my addition of salt to pizza. I thought she might faint.

if by askance you mean HORRIFIED, then yes indeedy.

No, I would never use a jar of sauce (except for Pataks paste. I suspect the problem is that I tend to cook quite strongly flavoured stuff, like Indian, Thai or Japanese, and even the Italian style that I would normally do would have strong flavours like pesto, lemon or wine. I think that perhaps JO's recipes are more to suit the palates of people who like things that I hate (eg shepherd's pie or steamed savoury puddings).

herbie, the dds and I love the brocooli and pesto taggliatelle!

aitch, it is pasta cooked with the sliced broccoli stem, then 2 mins before the end you add teh florets and thin thin slices of potato (peeled with peeler). When ready you stor in pesto and parmesan.

tis lovely

huffinstuff. It is not a gelatinous mush, boco. You must have cooked it for too long. 2 mins only.

it must rely on the potato. too starchy, and disgustoso. but maybe a leetle waxy charlotte slice would be nice?

ok so far i have tried:
cauliflower and macroni bake - added brocolli intended for brocolli taglietelle thing went down well with kids

classic tomatoe sauce- bland

fajitas- bland, kids left on plates,

yes, the potto woll be important. I have used a little vivaldi and some other little charlotte-type one. I wouldn't recommend a king edward

the potato will

Right, the rest of the bol sauce has gone into the freezer where it will stay until hell freezes over/we move house/dh fancies it, which ever comes first. I don't think I'll be eating it again, but if I do I'll stir through some passata and red chilis when I reheat it. I'm still not convinced about the anchovy, but I might add a drop of thai fish sauce.

same thing, you doofus.

Oh. Guess who has never read the ingredients on her bottle of fish sauce.

i am telling you, an anchovy is a great thing in a sauce. actually in days before children i used to do a spaghetti sauce that was loads of melted anchovies, garlic, chilli flakes, the juice of a lemon and scads of flat parsley to serve. ooooh, delicious. great if you had a cold coming on, toss and serve.