The Kitchen Diary – May

Mother’s Day brunch spread

Alrighty, without any faffing about here’s the May kitchen round-up …

May 1

Recipe Tin Eats’ Forever Chocolate Cake with chocolate buttercream from Dinner. You can find a similar recipe here.

Gordon Ramsay’s Malaysian Chicken. Similar in style to a Kapitan Chicken, I’d add a touch of belacan to the paste next time I make it—and instead of light coconut milk I’d use coconut cream—although the former did make the dish more diet-friendly.

May 11

I’m fighting some sort of infection, but need to practice next week’s bookclub bake – Nigella’s Mother-in-law’s Madeira Cake. Forgive the dreadful photo.

May 12

Mother’s Day and Grant and Sarah are in the kitchen whipping up a brunch picnic spread that we ended up having at home because it was raining and I’m still not feeling 100%. When I say Grant and Sarah, what I mean is Sarah came up with the ideas and Grant did the shopping and the preparing. Whatever the division of labour, it was lovely.

Burrata with pesto tomato salad

May 16

It’s bookclub baking day. We’ve been reading Howard’s End by E.M. Forster so today’s bake – Madeira Cake – was inspired by an Edwardian tea.

Between us being away in Melbourne and me not feeling great, I’ve spent much less time in the kitchen than I would have liked. Tonight, though, I felt the urge to make Wednesday night a tad less ordinary with the flavours of the Mediterranean and cook something from the Italian Coastal cookbook my dog bought me for Mother’s Day. The choice was chicken with lemon, capers, chilli, and thyme.

To go with it was Georgina Hayden’s Roasted Lemon, Oregano and Feta Potatoes. This recipe is from her new book, Greek-ish (which I can’t wait to check out), but thankfully, it was also in an extract published in The Guardian. You’ll find it here.

While I found the lemon in the chicken dish too much (and I’ve decided I’m not really a fan of capers—they have their place, but …), the potatoes were very moreish indeed.

May 17

After Writing Friday today, we went for a bowl of noodles at our favorite Thai place. Tonight, I’m craving chicken soup, so I’m making a pot of Cock-a-Leekie. Bliss.

May 18

Another couple of dishes from Italian Coastal. First up is grilled tomatoes which I serve with a burrata left from the Mother’s Day spread Grant and Sarah put on last week, followed by Pistachio Pannacotta using the pistachio spread we bought at South Melbourne Market.

May 21

Kali isn’t well – I mean really not well. Because I can’t stop thinking about the unthinkable I do what I always do when I can’t stop thinking about what I don’t want to think about – I baked. These Scottish Coffee Buns.

May 25

It’s been ages since we did a Destination Bowl dinner, but this weekend James Martin was drawn out (obviously not really James Martin, but the little slip of paper with his name on it – there are cookbook authors in there as well as destinations).

On the menu is pan-seared scallops with a pea puree followed by reef cod with buerre blanc sauce.

May 27

The hayfever I had yesterday is a full-blown head cold. I make a chicken stock and chuck in a whole head of garlic in the stock, leeks, carrots, and parsley stalks. With half the stock I make chicken and barley soup. It hits the spot.

May 28

The cold has now taken up residence in my chest so with the chicken stock I have left I made this spicy Asian-style egg drop broth for lunch and this Spanish-style bean and chorizo soup from James Martin’s Spanish Adventure for dinner.

Pic from James Martin’s Spanish Adventure

May 29

Another delivery of limes from Grant’s work so I baked yet another batch of Lime Curd Cakey Squares to send back in – and another couple of jars of lime curd.

May 30

It’s Writing Friday tomorrow so I’ve made a Zucchini and Sultana Loaf. We first tried this at a friend’s alpaca farm back in February and I’ve been dying to make it ever since. I’ll pop the recipe up in the next few days.

I’m currently reading Bee Wilson’s The Secret of Cooking and imagine I will be for some time.

This book was a Times and Guardian book of the year last year and Nigella’s cookbook of the year and it’s flipping brilliant. So good that I feel as though I should be cooking everything. I’ll go as far to say that I think this book will be a classic like Nigella’s How To Eat – #bigcall.

Anyway, this afternoon, I made a batch of the universal curry sauce. The gas ran out halfway through, and I had to change the gas over, but the sauce worked well. I added more chillies (of course) and turned half of it into a chicken curry that tasted just like a Friday night chicken Tikka Masala. The other half of the batch is in the freezer.

Cookbooks

I received an advance review copy (via NetGalley) of Tom Parker-Bowles’ Cooking and the Crown. Aside from the recipes (a few of which I’ve marked to cook), I’m enjoying the social history. As the queen’s son, Parker-Bowles, a fabulous food writer, is the perfect person to write this.

I’ll put a review up closer to the publication date.

It prompted me to post a review of one of his previous books – the Fortnum and Mason Cookbook … you’ll find it here.

Also this month, for the Cookbook Club I’m in, I updated a review for Nagi Maehashi’s fabuloso Recipe Tin Eats Dinner.

Linking up with In My Kitchen with Sherry’s Pickings …