Pork steaks with Gruyere and Marsala

So, this week brought me Nigel Slater's '30 minute cook' at the bargain price of £3.50 from my local charity shop.  I seem  to remember Nigel referencing this book in his introduction to 'Eat' as not being exactly embarrassed about but times have moved on kind of thing - I snapped it up.  The fussy daughter alighted on this recipe before it caught my eye and as it so immediately appealed to us both this is my first go at the book.  It is similar to other, later Nigel recipes but has aged well nevertheless.  The flavours here are robust and as I've said many times before you can always win me over by lobbing a bit of Marsala in.  I knew I'd love it but was nervous about the fussy daughter's verdict.  I needn't have been - she loved it.  

Parpadelle with courgettes, sultanas and pine nuts

I'm just back from a week in Corfu and the temptation to just bung some feta in the oven and eat the way we have been doing must be resisted.  The hands are also still broken so it must be simple fare.  When we went away it was cold and wet but we have come home to sunshine and a giant heatwave on the horizon.  So back to Nigella Summer it is.  I really enjoyed the clean, fresh flavours in this dish and the occasional hit of sweet sultana balanced the courgettes perfectly and were a delight.  If you want a full on sauce with your pasta this is not for you but so good for me, for tonight.

Beef with oyster sauce

I can't help but think that Ken is cheating here and has simply slipped in a Chinese classic pretending it's Thai.  His explanation is that this is widely eaten in Thailand and the Thais say they taught the dish to the Chinese.  Whatever!  This classic is one of my all time favourite dishes anyway so I have made different versions of it before but this is a new recipe to me.  I used top quality steak for my meat which perhaps made a difference but I've got to say that this was perfect, the flavours beautifully balanced and complementing each other.  I'm worried that when I next make this it won't be so good and I just got lucky this time.  

Hot and Sour Prawns

So, I was knocked off my bike on Thursday morning by an incredibly gormless passenger in a car and I now have only 4 functioning fingers to work with as my left wrist has a broken bone and my little finger in my right hand is not just broken but includes a severed artery. Making cooking difficult.  Difficult but not impossible.  I trawled my new Ken Hom book and came across this one - the most difficult part of making this for me was opening the tin of coconut milk.  I made coconut rice to go with this and it was perfect.  Loving my new book!

Cauliflower Thai-style

And for the vegetarian in my life ... Not wanting to exclude him from Thai night I made this to go with the coconut rice but it didn't exactly go down a storm - he ate it, but to be fair he'd eat anything as long as it's vegetarian and said it was alright. When asked to elaborate he said it was quite mild and would be a nice complement to a spicy dish.  I doubt I'll make this again.  

Red pork curry

Today I added to my extensive cook book collection and bought 'Ken Hom cooks Thai'.  Determined to use anything new I buy (as opposed to reading it, salivating, and then return to the comforting arms of Nigel or Nigella) I got cracking straight away.  So here is this week's first new dish.  Astonishingly, I have never made a Thai curry before - I don't really know why, but there you have it.  My daughter and her friend were in for dinner tonight and both were positive and appreciative of this creation.  I have changed the ingredients slightly as Ken used baby corn to my green beans but I knew the fussy daughter wouldn't have touched baby corn.  It was really lovely and I can definitely see it becoming a regular addition to my repertoire.  I made coconut rice to go alongside this - again something I've never made before but also extremely good.  

Jammy cocunut sponge

I'm cheating a little here as I made this on Saturday, but it is new to me and so fits the criteria.  This is from Jamie's Great Britain and is lovely, light and tasty. I also felt total domestic goddessery by not only making my own jam (this is part of the recipe to be fair) but making it from blackberries that were picked by my other half about 2 years ago and which I froze at the time.

Gingery duck with red onion and orange salad

Whilst the weather is not screaming summer (yet), Nigella is.  This is from Nigella Summer which my daughter thoughtfully bought for my birthday last year.  As my birthday is late August summer was as good as gone (in fact, barring 2 glorious weeks in May I don't remember it even turning up in The People's Republic of Manchester).  So I've only just got cracking on this one - expect more from here in the next few weeks. 

Anyway, this was good and even my fussy daughter enjoyed it, which regular readers will know is not a given.  I couldn't taste the fresh ginger from the marinade in the final dish but trust Nigella enough to know that it wouldn't be right without it.  I also didn't much care for the fresh parsley which I thought overpowered it a little so would leave that out were I to make this again.

I miss blogging!

Recreating the kitchen diaries gave me a real purpose with my cooking but I've not been able to get into Eat in the same way.  I'm not giving up on Eat but I do cook from other books regularly and decided to blog my new finds as I make them.  The twice is nice in the title along with my blog Web address is referring to the minimum number of new recipes I'm going to attempt each week - that is two. Wish me luck!