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....