Red Prawn and Mango Curry

I'm starting to think I should have called this blog "Bastardizing Nigella Express" cuz I think that's kinda what I'm doing....and it's not going to stop jfyi. I've been wanting to make this recipe for at least a week but I finally got around to it this evening.

This recipe is supposed to be made with red curry - But I don't like red curry. So I made it with green curry. Also, I used vegetable stock inplace of chicken stock. I used small shrimp because they were on sale as opposed to the King prawns. And I added some yellow potaotes into the mix. That was for Husband's benefit because and I quote..." I don't like Sweet Potato." So he got some regular old potato to keep him satisfied.

See what I mean about the bastardizing?

Anyhow, I really liked this one. It took a bit more time. I didn't have all the pre-chopped ingredients that she suggests so I had to do my own chopping. Still, this is Nigella Express we're talking about so by a little bit longer I mean you can still have this made in 30 minutes.Less if you don't have to chop. I made it with the full can of coconut milk (as opposed to the half can listed), which Nigella says she sometimes does herself and served over rice. This took it from fork eating to spoon eating. So it was like a Thai stew almost. Really delish!

This dinner made a perfect Sunday Comfort Food meal. And the best thing about this is that even though I ate a generous portion I was not uncomfortably full. I just felt satisfied.

2 thumbs up on this one.

Breakfast Bruschetta

Avocado is one of my all time favourite foods. So I've been drooling over the photo of this recipe ever since I got the book...but I never made it until today. I got out of bed in a fog this morning, stumbled to the kitchen and whipped this together.

Now as I said, I was in a fog, so please forgive me for not being too "with it" at 8:30am. Who is with it at 8:30am I ask you? If you're one of those people you have a serious problem. No sane person is truly awake until at leat 10 am ...and in my humble opinion 11am is a much more decent hour. The brunching hour is really the perfect time to roll out and start your day. Anyhow, my point behind this is I really didn't read the recipe much past the ingredients. So when I'd oiled my "toast" before it was actually toasted and was therefore infact still bread I wasn't too fazed. "What's the difference really?" I thought to myself. And it turns out I was quite right in thinking so. After oiling my "toast" I then toasted it. No harm, no foul. For the tomato bruschetta you just chop a ripe tomato throw it on the toast spice with salt and pepper, drizzle more oil. BAM - your done. Then for the avocado bruschetta you mash up the avacado, add lime juice and season with salt and pepper. Then you portion onto your toasts and garnish with parsley. - That's if your Nigella. If your me and it's 8:30 in the morning you toss EVERYTHING in a bowl, mash it up, then realize you messed up. Then you think to yourself "Who gives a shit? It's all still there." and you proceed with confidence.

A couple of notes I'll make for you. #1. For the love of God do not make this with your wonderbread. Nigella suggests a sourdough loaf...I used sourdough baguette. But really you can use any of your bakery fresh favourites. #2. For the avocado bruschetta I seasoned with just a touch of bolivian rose salt (and everyday pepper) and the rose salt made a HUGE difference in flavour. I can't imagine this would be anywhere near as good using your everyday table salt.

In the end this made a terriffic and unusual breakfast. And it's pretty much fool proof. The red and green together on the plate made me think that this would be a great Christmas breakfast. Or if you're looking for something a little different next time you're entertaining for brunch I would definitely add this to the menu.

Doughnut French Toast

This morning I woke up with 3 words on my mind...doughnut, french and toast. Don't ask me why, I wasn't planning on making this for breakfast. I wasn't even sure I'd do a Nigella recipe today. But when you wake up with a recipe title in your head you can't deny the fates. I was forced to make this for breakfast by higher powers than myself.

This recipe is easy enough to make. Ask yourself.."Do I know how to make French Toast?" If you answer yes then you are good to go on this one. If you answer no then you're in need of a lot more help and guidance in the kitchen than I can give you. You'd best hire yourself a maid.

Really all you're doing for this is adding some vanilla to your french toast mix and once cooked dredge your toast in sugar.

Here's where the "problem" arises. I put quotes because it's not a real problem just more a difference of opinion between lowly me and Nigella. She wants me to soak my bread in the mixture for 5 minutes PER SIDE. This give you one soggy S.O.B. to fry in your pan. Good luck getting it to your pan in one piece. It's so soggy that as soon as you start to pick it up you sense disaster immediately, close your eyes, start swearing under your breath and hope for the best as you toss it on the pan fast as you can. This method has a 50% return FYI.

I have made this recipe once before. About a year ago and at that time I don't think I did the 5 minutes per side soaking. It seemed excessive to me then and it seems excessive to me now also. I thought about soaking for less time but the I said to myself - "Do this one by the book. You've yet to do a recipe EXACTLY as instructed yet - at least do one" So I did 5 mintues. Other than the transfer problem, you wind up this a french toast that is soooo eggy it's almost like a quiche inside. Maybe you're thinking to yourself "Yummy, quiche! Sounds delish!" While I'm thinking to myself "Ugh, quiche!? Yikes." That's right you have to fry the shit out of this and then you still wind up with a spongy french toast.

If I were to make this again I would not soak it for 5 minutes per side - Just do 5 minutes TOTAL. I think the result would be better then (I think that's how I made them last time around and they weren't so quiche like). Less spongy is better in my books, but if you love yourself a good quiche then soak away my friends, soak away.

Overall, I'm gonna rate this one - one thumb up. For all my blabbering they really weren't so bad. I mean how bad can anything coated in sugar be?

Hot Toddy

The Infamous Hot Toddy. You hear about these all you life (or at least I did) but have you ever actually had one? I hadn't....until today. I was very curious when I saw this recipe in the book. I've always wanted to try a Hot Toddy but I really never even knew what was in one. Turns out it's rum (or burbon - I went with rum) honey, water and lemon. I have to say when I went to take a drink of this the steam that was rising from it went straight up my nose and I couldn't breath. It took a while before I could get a drink from it. I thought it would be really harsh because the steam is killer. But once I was able to take a sip I was really surprised by how good it was. This was not harsh at all - it's a little sweet and a little sour at the same time. However drinking a huge glass of this....not going to happen. To me this drink would be perfect as an after dinner apperatif in a small liqueur glass. Or if you've got a god-awful cold, drinking a mug of this would not only open your sinuses but knock you out for a while to get some sleep. I just may have one of these next time the seasonal cold comes about. Until that time I think I'll stick to drink my rum mojito style.

Pea and Pesto Soup

I love to make soups to take for lunch at work. And making soup can be very theraputic. I hadn't made soup in a few months so I was well over due. I decided to try Pea and Pesto this time around. You can make this in about 15 minutes and 7 of those mintues you can sit on the couch with the timer on like I did. Minimal ingredients too.

Basically you let everything but the Pesto boil together for 7 minutes. Then remove the onion, add the pesto and puree. Voila, you've just made soup.

This isn't the best soup I've ever had or anything but it's pretty tasty. I'll give her some extra points for this soup too though because I did use pesto from a jar and a Nigella says the taste is much, much better if you use FRESH pesto. Well, sorry Nigella but I don't have any fresh pesto kickin around and the amount of house work I have to do today says I'm not making any. So jarred pesto it was. I am curious about if I you did make this with fresh pesto though. I imagine it would be better -fresh herbs are always better. But using jarred is up to snuff for sure. At least for lunch at work standards. If you wanted to serve this as a first course for company I'd go the extra mile and make some fresh pesto. Also this recipe makes 2 lunch size portions or 4 starter portions just as an FYI.

The Fucking Best Cappuccino Ever

Now, I'm sorry for the coarse language but sometimes the eff word is called for and this is one of those times. Just saying that this is the best cappuccino ever would not suffice. Because it was the FUCKING best cappuccino ever.

I also should mention right off the bat that this is not a Nigella recipe. This is pure Mrs K having a perfect Sunday morning. Let me just tell you I got an espresso machine for christmas and I have been in caffine heaven ever since. But today I reached Nirvana.

The secret to the perfect cappuccino is in the foam. And how do you get perfect foam??? SKIM MILK. That's it. It's just that simple. Skim Milk. This cappuccino took me from sunday morning dull state of mind. To utopic levels not felt since my last Johnny Depp dream. Actually you know what I think it was even better than a Johnny Depp dream. - Well wait a minute maybe not all my Johnny Depp dreams but my last Johnny Depp dream I was awoken before anything too good happened so yes it was better than my last Johnny Depp dream.

So, this specific cappuccino was made with Starbucks Bold -freshly ground - espresso beans. 2 shots of espresso and then topped with steamed and foamed Neilson skim milk. Then to make it official a dash of cinnamon. It was the foam that made it. Drinking that foam was like drinking a cloud ...no wait better. It was like drinking a Care Bear cloud.

I know this is a Nigella Express blog. But I just had to write about this cappuccino. Hopefully this was not a one off where the stars where alligned and I can re-create this every weekend. If so I think I just fell inlove with myself. I swear I could open a cafe in Paris with this shit.

Turkey Fillets with Anchovy, Gherkin and Dill (or not!) and Mustard Caper Sauce for Broccoli

Well I have to tell you I was looking forward to coming home from work and making this dinner. Then my GO train was delayed. I sat on the train for over an hour - engrossed in my book I'm reading so it wasn't sooo bad. Then (after being on the train for over an hour) I heard that all traffic on the train line was shut down until further notice. That's when I decided to bail on the train - we were given one LAST chance to get off. So I made a break for it. A $50 cab ride later and I was home around 730. FYI - I'd left work at 4:45!!!! So as you can imagine all enthusiam had left me. I was down right starving by the time I got home. Normally in this situation I would have bought a sub for dinner but I'd splashed all over FB that I was making a recipe tonight so I felt committed.

Good thing it's Nigella EXPRESS I'm thinking to myself.

So I finally get started making dinner and I pull out all the ingredients and line them up. I hadn't picked up the fresh dill for this because I thought I'd just use some dried dill rather than by an entire bunch only to use 3 sprigs. Well, as it turns out I don't have any dried dill. "So What" I think to myself. "the dill is not going to make or break this recipe". So the dill was omitted. Everything came together really fast though - fast enough that I didn't break into the hummus like a fiend which is my normal behaviour when I can't stand the hunger anymore. The one thing that kind of had me wondering was that my anchovies wouldn't "melt" for the life of me. But the turkey cooked fast -I was lucky to find some pre-beaten turkey breast so that made it even faster. So I decided to ignore my non-melting anchovies. I also decided to make a tofu verion of this too to try for the veggie readers. The Vermouth Sauce was a blessing after my taxi bill home - to be completely honest I even took a swig out to the bottle of vermouth to help ease the pain of the commute home.

The mustard sauce on the broccoli was sooooo freakin good. I could easily have eaten an entire head of broccoli with this sauce on it. I will definitly make that again. The tofu was pretty freakin tasty too. As a matter of fact I would even suggest putting the mustard sauce on tofu - that would be delicious also. - Yum imagine you put cubed tofu in the broccoli with and a healthy covering of this sauce..sounds like delicious!

Back to the meal though..If you're really hungry I would also serve a starch with this meal - I didn't make one because I was in a rush - but I did eat not only a piece of turkey but also some tofu too - so that's why it was more filling for me.

And now for the grand finale of the kind of day I've had - Husband just pointed out to me that I made this recipe with SARDINES and not anchovies!!!! Hence the no melting!!!! But it still was good. Though the anchovies likely would have been better. I'm sure I'll make this recipe again becasue I did enjoy it - but I'll make it with the dill and the anchovies. - Now I'm going to either A-find that bottle of vermouth again or B- go exercise my anxieties away..I'm not sure which I'll do yet....

Home-Made Instant Pancake Mix and Blueberry Syrup!

Who doesn't love eating pancakes for breakfast???? I know I love pancakes but I very rarely eat them. They always make me think of my mom because when I was a kid whenever I had a friend sleep over my mom would always make us pancakes for breakfast. It got to be that when my sister and I were older we would make fun of her lack of imagination and predictability on breakfasts. But now that I'm even older I've come to associate pancakes with general feelings of happiness and good friends so it's even more of a comfort food for me. Actually come to think of it pancakes became such a traditional sleepover breakfast that once old enough my sister and I would make pancakes for breakfast even when mom wasn't home. Although we tended to make then in funny shapes when there were no adults around - I specifically remember the occassion when sis and I made ourselves a couple of penis pancakes. We thought we were very naughty and were laughing hysterically. Anyhow the point is me and pancakes go way back.

This morning I woke up feeling slightly energetic - enough so that I felt up to making pancakes. Nigella's recipe for your own instant mix is a simple as it gets. And you probably have everything in your cupboard right now. The way it works is that you first make the dry "instant mix" and then you take a portion of that mix and make your pancake batter. Then you have enough mix left to make pancakes for another time too.

The Blueberry Syrup is down right fool proof aswell. Just boil together the blueberries with maple syrup and voila! The pancakes and the syrup are easy enough to make in your pre-coffee morning fog and delicious enough to make your morning a good one (especially if you're watching an Audrey Hepburn film and drinking a cappuccino - what else do you want on a Saturday morning?)

I highly recommend trying this next time you're making pancakes. Or if ever you're hosting a sleepover ;)

Mustard Pork Chops ( or Tofu! )

I had promised this recipe to Husband a while ago. Actually the only way I could get him to go along with eating the salmon was by dangling the pork chop in front of him. So today after work I stopped by Longo's and picked him up a pork chop to make this dinner. I had a plan in place for what I would do for myself with this meal because I HATE pork chops and my plan involved tofu. I figured the best replacement for the pork in this recipe was a nice firm piece of tofu. I've never made myself a piece of tofu before though so I was a little weary of how it would turn out.

I was abso-freakin-lutely famished when I got home so it was good that this recipe came together fast. I flattened the pork and fried it then started on the sauce. There's very few ingredients to this so it's just a snap really. I had the whole thing done in about 15min.

The end result is a nice tangy meal. My tofu was really great with the sauce on it and Husband said his was very good and tangy. I served this dish with potatoes but Nigella serves it with gnocchi and after eating this I would suggest going with the gnocchi.

Overall, this meal was decent but I can't say I would make it again. Maybe if you're looking for something different to do with tofu or pork chops this recipe is worth a try.

FYI - the picture has Husband's pork chop in the front and my tofu is behind that on the blue plate.

Grilled Cheese and Slaw

I was planning on making the pork chop recipe next but as Husband ate a pork chop for breakfast this morning I didn't think he'd want one for dinner. So I chose this recipe to make and boy am I glad I did. This meal is about 1000 times better than pork chops. But as I HATE pork chops that's really not saying much. But trust me this is good.

Usually I read my way thru a recipe before starting it but this was just a grilled cheese with coleslaw - Do I really need to read it? - I think to myself. And I answered myself with a resounding NO.

Well, perhaps I should have read it first. Not that it didn't turn out but still it may have gone smoother. I started with making the slaw first. This really was a snap because my Metro, of course, did not have heads of cabbage. I had to buy a prepared bag of cabbage/slaw mix. So really all I had to do was chop the apple and make the dresssing.

As I'm chopping the apple Husband comes into the kitchen to snoop around. He's pretty excited for this meal too because he LOVES grilled cheese. But he freaks out when he sees the apple.

HUSBAND: Apple!...Apple! What do you need apple for?

ME: Can you just please let me make this? (in a terse voice)

HUSBAND: Why are you using apple? [big sigh]

ME: Just let me do this! (continuing to chop)

HUSBAND: Oh...Oh...it's for the salad. I thought you were putting apple in the grilled cheese.
ME: Please just let me make this in peace. (edgy pleading voice)

With which he left the room- with his hopes of a fantsatic dinner surely dashed. So I finish chopping the unwanted apple and start making the dressing. I'd actually doubled the ingredients for the slaw but still only made a single for the dressing because I didn't want it to be too much dressing so I thought I'd start with 1x for the dressing and then if I needed more dressing I'd just make more. So I'm blowing thru the dressing recipe when my eyes fall upon "1/2 tsp caraway seeds". F**K. How the eff did I miss this when making my grocery list? HOW? Well it really doesn't matter does it because the point is I'm in the middle of this recipe and I haven't bought the effing caraway seeds. Will it taste horrible without them??? I can't think of a single recipe that I've ever made with caraway seeds. But I decide to take a look around the black hole that is my spice cupboard. And let me just say thank you to my parents neighbour who bought me for Christmas one year those spinny pre-filled spice racks because that had some caraway seeds on it. So I breath a sigh of relief and pop the seal off that and finish the dressing. Add it to the slaw.... and it's not enough. But I'm so relieved that I have caraway seeds that I don't care. So I'm whipping together dressing #2 when I realize that I did eff up this recipe after all, Caraway seeds and all, because I accidentally added twice the mango chutney required for BOTH times I made the dressing. "Shit", I'm thinking to myself. But I'm looking at the bowl in my hand and there's a good amount of unmixed chutney on the sides so I scrape out as much chutney as I can and press on.

With the slaw made I start on the grilled cheese. For Bread I'm using Old Fashioned Belgian from the bakery and my cheddar is 2 Year Old Balderson. This part I'm quite familiar with - nothing cures a hangover like a grilled cheese when you're too hung over to make it to Wendy's so we're quite adept at making these in my household. Rather than use butter for grilling the bread as we normally do Nigella uses oil and of course the grill pan for presentation. Ideally this is when you would use your panini press but I don't have one of those so I just pressed down real hard with the spatula while grilling. 4 minutes later and dinner is served.

I thought this dinner was perfect. I was satified but too full and because I doubled the slaw recipe I have some for my lunch tomorrow. Husband thought this would make a better luch than a dinner but he liked it too. He even conceeded that the salad was good "even for having apples in it" to quote him.

And so a successful dinner for MrsK and Nigella ;)

Chicken Caesar Cornets

New Year's Eve and I'm going to a potluck. I need to bring an appetizer type dish so of course I'm going to make something from Nigella Express. After careful consideration I decided to go with this recipe. However I also decided that I would not use the chicken so infact I was just making Caesar Cornets.

I'm sure you are all aware that when making a salad you have to add the dressing at the last minute or else your salad will become a soggy sodden piece of shite. I really didn't want this to be a piece of shite...so I waited until the VERY last minute to whip this together. - It's called Nigella Express I'm thinking so 20 minutes should be tons of time. Well 20 minutes was enough..but JUST enough time. I guess I was slowed down too by the fact that while cleaning my house that afternoon I thought I'd be crafty and carry my vacuum and my suitecase down the stairs at the same time - BIG mistake. I strained my back doing this. So I was tenderly walking around and bending over was just not happening. Due to this I opted not to get any measuring instuments that required me to bend low or reach high. Basically I was using my scale and just a regular old spoon. So as you can imagine nothing was done to perfection with this one. It was basically just a race against time before my DD picked me up.

Anyhow - I did get the dressing and salad made fairly quickly - it was the plating and the rolling into cornets that took me forever. For one thing I had to put tooth picks through all the corenets because they NEVER would have stayed shut. But I was making small appetizer size cornets and I think Nigella is intending theses to be made with a full size Tortilla. Also I think that a flour tortilla would have stayed shut better but the recipe called for CORN and I wanted to use the corn flour ones...but I'm just saying. I think I got about 16 small cornets made. Then I tried one. It did not taste good. I don't really think it was my hodge-podge way of throwing this together either. It tasted pretty bland. This recipe needed something more to give it a little umph. But I can't think what that would be...maybe heavier on the garlic? Maybe more black pepper? I'm not sure. I had replaced the chicken with crouton (still caesar-y but kept the dish veg) so I don't really know that the chicken would have made the difference. Either way this dish just did not do it for me. But if I could just figure out what would give it that umph I'd give it another go. Maybe anchovies to make it a true caesar???? I'm just not sure...any suggestions sis?

Others assured me the taste was good but they were just a bit awkward to eat because the corn flour tortilla would fall apart if you didn't hold it right...Anyhow turns out that despite my waiting to the last minute to avoid a shite dish - I still wound up with a shite dish.

And for anyone whose wondering about my back - I did some self-medicating for that. Being that it was New Years I took several doses of "Purple Jesus" martini (in addition to a muscle relaxer) and was dancing like a mad man all night with no pain at all! This morning (or should I say afternoon) when I had finally slept off my hangover my back is still a bit sore but feeling much better that yesterday. So it seems Jesus is still performing miracles.