Sep 25

Cookbook 189: Appetites: A Cookbook

Appetites: A Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain was gifted to me by Scott (one of the husbands) for Christmas. He knows I love Anthony Bourdain and remain devastated by his untimely death, and happily buys me wonderful cookbooks as gifts.

Anyway, back to this book. It’s odd, but not in a bad way. Odd like someone who wanted to be an edgy cookbook designer decided to take artistic and generally not entirely representative photos of the food. For example, the photo accompanying the Bagna Cauda with Crudites (which I did not cook), is a wooden spoon covered in the bagna cauda, over someone’s bare feet that has had the bagna cauda splashed on their foot. It’s weird. Some of the photos are of Anthony Bourdain or his friends posing with the dish or elements of the dish. It doesn’t detract from the book, but makes it a weirder experience in selecting recipes.

Unlike some other Anthony Bourdain books, this one actually has vegetarian recipes included, probably aimed as a side dish, but still there are several non-potato based vegetarian dishes which means that this book is more friendly to my household. We only cooked two recipes out of this book on the night in question, and I have a couple of recommendations for those recipes, but in flipping through it again there are many others I want to try. Overall 4 out of 5 stars.

(recipes translated to metric by me and Window’s calculator)

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Jul 27

Moving the website

Hi all

Today I was notified that I can no longer use the URL cookbookproject.id.au because the rules for that nameserver no longer allow websites for hobbies or special interests (from March 2022 apparently).

So what does this mean?

I’m going to rebrand the website and move it to another host. For people who have subscribed to this website directly, there should be little change except for the new name when I get things up and running (I hope).

For everyone else who points RSS readers here, I have two weeks to make this change, so as soon as I have chosen the new domain name, I’ll post it here and you can point your reader at the new website URL.

It’s a huge mess, but hopefully it won’t overwhelm me. Just think of having to move house urgently because you’re no longer allowed to be coded female in your house. It’s like that.

Rebecca

Jul 14

Cookbook 188: Persiana Everyday

I bought Persiana Everyday by Sabrina Ghayour for Scott, for Christmas, after he flipped through a copy that was gifted to his parents by another family member. The recipes looked good, the inclusion of pork in a cookbook inspired by Persia seemed odd, but I’m not here to judge (well not that, I am totally here to judge the quality of the cookbook). I ended up cooking 5 recipes from this book over two different evenings. Two of those recipes did not involve photos, because I was hosting a fundraising dinner for the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, so I’ll write up the recipes and you will have to use your imagination about the food.

Overall I was somewhat disappointed by the book. Of the 5 recipes I made, only one of them really worked in my opinion. One was an absolute disaster, and the other three were ok. I give this 2 out of 5 stars.

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Jul 14

Random rewritten recipe – Spicy carrot and lentil soup

No photos, because I was busy eating the soup, but it was light orange, as you’d expect.

Ok, so I thought I’d mix around Friday soup night and add a new soup to the repertoire. Normally I’m making either potato and leek soup or a red curry pumpkin soup, both of which are fantastic, but having other options are also good. I found this recipe originally on the BBC Good Food website, and while reflecting on the recipe decided that I could definitely make it much more delectable, so here we go.

Ingredients:

  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • pinch chilli flakes (or as much as you like)
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 3 garlic cloves, sliced (or crushed or whole it doesn’t matter hugely)
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 1/2 tsp chaar masala
  • 600g carrots, washed and coarsely grated (no need to peel)
  • 140g split red lentils, rinsed
  • 1L hot vegetable stock (from a cube is fine)
  • 125ml milk (or coconut cream)
  • salt and pepper (as necessary to season)
  • plain yogurt and naan bread, to serve

Method:

  1. Heat a large saucepan and dry-fry 2 tsp cumin seeds and a pinch of chilli flakes for 1 min, or until they start to jump around the pan and release their aromas. Scoop out about half with a spoon and set aside.
  2. Add 2 tbsp olive oil to the same pan and add the onion and garlic. Cook over a low heat until soft (5 – 10 minutes).
  3. Add the tomatoes and chaar masala and cook for 2 minutes.
  4. Add the coarsely grated carrots, split red lentils, hot vegetable stock and milk to the pan, stir and bring to the boil.
  5. Simmer for 15 mins until the lentils have swollen and softened.
  6. Blend the soup with a stick blender or in a food processor until smooth (or leave it chunky if you prefer).
  7. Season to taste and finish with a dollop of plain yogurt and a sprinkling of the reserved toasted spices. Serve with warmed naan breads.

Notes on this recipe:

  • It tasted good, and was nice and thick. The addition of chaar masala and the tomato made it a lot more dahl like, and that is a good thing in my opinion
  • I could probably have cooked the onions more when I made this so there was a bit more umami flavour.
  • The most time consuming bit of the recipe was grating the carrots. Otherwise it was a pretty simple and quick affair.
  • If you don’t want to make chaar masala you can use garam masala instead.

May 28

Cookbook 187: Sumac – Recipes and stories from Syria

I really wanted to love Sumac: Recipes and stories from Syria by Anas Atassi. It’s a beautiful book, the photos throughout are lovely, the stories of Atassi’s childhood in Syria are engaging, the recipes sounded great. However it was not to be. The recipes I selected were all sweet and tart, in ways that I don’t like savoury food to be. The only dish that was really enjoyed instead of looked at weirdly after tasting, was the cauliflower dish, and I don’t like cauliflower (Nigel enjoyed it though).

If you like sweet, tangy or tart savoury food, then this cookbook is for you. It definitely isn’t for me, and I’m giving it one out of five stars and will be retiring it from my collection.

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Jan 20

Cookbook 186: My Lisbon

I travelled to Lisbon in 2018 and loved the city and it’s food (though Porto is definitely my favourite Portuguese city). It’s a city I want to return to, to travel the streets, eat more food, and just enjoy my time there. So I bought My Lisbon by Nuno Mendes, wanting to recreate a little of that Lisbon magic in my house. Oh boy was I disappointed. Though glad I didn’t pay the going price of $90 for this book, I would have been MUCH more disappointed if that was the case.

To begin with, there are not that many vegetarian dishes in the book that suited my household, and with recipes broken up into “pastries, snacks, lunch, small plates, dinner, desserts and sandwiches”, I had to go through section by section to find recipes to make for the dinner I was creating. The recipes I chose in the end were either odd or boring. There is a recipe for a leg of lamb cooked in a bottle of wine with bacon and onion. None of this flavour was in the lamb itself. It was tender, but it was just lamb. The bread and kale dish tasted nice (apparently, I don’t do kale), but the texture was odd, and cooking it was a pain. The roast vegetables were nothing special. It was so disappointing. 1 out of 5 stars.

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Jan 07

Cookbook 185: Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine and beyond

I’ve always had a soft spot for Ukrainian food and have always loved the flavours when I’ve had the opportunity to try it (sadly not enough opportunities), so when I found Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine and beyond by Olia Hercules, I immediately purchased it. There are a lot of recipes in this book, including a lot for bread which I really want to try at a later point, and I really enjoyed cooking from it.

There was one dish I completely messed up, and that’s my fault not the recipe book’s. I won’t include that in this post because I have not successfully cooked it, and one day I will and I will revisit this book and we can talk about how good (or not) that dish is. Overall, I give this cookbook 4 stars, and am looking forward to going back and trying other things.

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Nov 27

Cookbook 184: Miguel Maestre’s Feast: 100 Generous Recipes to Share

Who doesn’t like the idea of cooking for a stack of people (most people, I know)? I like the idea of cooking for a stack of people, and cooking interesting recipes that are specifically to share with other people sounded like a great idea, so I picked up Miguel Maestre’s Feast: 100 Generous Recipes to Share in the hope that it’d have some amazing recipes and I was not disappointed.

It wasn’t easy selecting which recipes to make, and I know that there will be readers out there who will roll their eyes at the “hummus”, I did too, but overall I liked this book and want to come back to it and try some more things. 3.5 stars out of 5.

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Oct 17

Cookbook 183: La Paella

I wanted a good paella cookbook, one that wasn’t from the US, and it turns out that they’re not that easy to find. Eventually I settled on La Paella by Louise Pickford, an author who was born in the UK, lived in Australia and now has moved to France. I thought she’d probably be able to provide recipes that will work for my availability of ingredients and preferred style of cooking.

And the book isn’t just paella recipes, there are rice puddings, rice heavy stews and some Spanish style pasta dishes. Because cooking paella is a big job, I only ended up cooking two vegetarian ones from the book so far, and a rice pudding. I definitely want to come back and cook more because so many of the recipes look amazing. I’ve already cooked one dish from this multiple times because it is tasty and easy to make. 5 out of 5 stars.

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Aug 17

Cookbook 182: Epic Meatballs

Yeah, brace yourselves because this is not going to be a good ride. I bought Epic Meatballs: 120 next-level meatball recipes including recipes for sides, sauces and garnishes by Matteo Bruno because I love meatballs. What a great concept, a whole lot of stuff, meat or veg, in a ball, with a sauce. You may remember The Bowlers Meatball which I cooked from ages ago, and which I’ve gone back to. Great book, highly recommended. This book by Bruno? Terrible book, don’t recommend. In fact, if someone gives you this cookbook as a gift, they probably don’t like you.

So what is wrong with this book? I’d suggest that Bruno didn’t actually test any of the recipes, and wrote down what he thought he did, versus what he actually does. There are other things, the Chunky Italian Red Sauce is measured in weight (kilograms/pounds) and the meatball recipe that calls for that sauce asks for it in volume (litres/ounces). The vegetarian meatball I cooked (there are very few vegetarian recipes in this book), completely failed, actually being too liquid to cook. The meat meatball had little structural integrity. I give this book 1 star out of 5. Stay clear.

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