Home Cooking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale

This one is the second cookbook offering from Lorraine Pascale – Home Cooking Made Easy published by Harper Collins in 2011. A follow up to her Baking Made Easy, which I loved. It’s a tie in book for her four part Home Cooking Made Easy TV series also from 2011. There are a lot more recipes in the book than were featured on the series though.

I’m never sure if having a great first book is a help or hindrance. On the one hand you are likely to get the second one if the first one has been good; but then the second one has a lot to live up to.

Home Cooking Made Easy is a nice book, done in the same style as the first one. Plenty of pictures, glossy clean pages, colourful chapter heading pages and easy recipes. Chapters are * Starters, Soups Canapes & Snacks* Breads* Mains* Vegetables & Vegetarian* Desserts* Cakes & Cookies* and *Sweets, Jams and Other Good Stuff*. It has a bit of a cold weather food vibe going on with it, offering up mostly warming and comforting dishes.

There are many savoury recipes to tempt with classics like chilli con carne and lasagne, plus others with a little spin like Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Chilli & Ginger, Twenty-first Century Ham, Cheese & Chive Bread, Pad Thai, Oven Roast Salmon with a Mustard & Parsley Crust, Paprika Baked Fish with Chorizo, Quick Brown Sugar & Spring Onion Chicken Teriyaki, Lemon and Thyme and Not-so-slow Roast Leg of Lamb with Thyme and Plum Gravy.

Where Lorraine really shines for me though is still with her sweet desserts and baking recipes, she definitely has a great touch with these. She makes them easy and a little bit different too. Some of the sweet recipes I’ve marked to try are: Shameless, Flourless, Moist and Sticky Chocolate Cake, Extra Gooey Pecan Pie with Brown Sugar Pastry, Steamed Chocolate Pudding with warm Mars Bar Sauce, Peanut Butter Truffles, Peppermint Creams Sugar Rush and the beautiful Graffiti Cake. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I do a second helping post from this book.

For this book and more inspiration do have a look at Waterstones cookbook selection here. Now to my first makes:

‘Oat Couture’ Granola Bars

These were good. They are a flapjack type bar with pumpkin seeds, raisins, pecans and maple syrup. I loved the deep almost smokiness that the maple syrup brought here.

Creamy Pancetta Pasta with Mushrooms and Parmesan

On TV Lorraine made it with a home-made cracked black pepper pasta rather than plain pasta. It did say you could use normal pasta, but we thought it was a bit blah like that. I’d like to give it a go with the flavoured pasta though, as I think it would make all the difference. The recipe is here.

Chocolate Digestive Cheesecake with White Icing

Boy oh boy this was a rich cheesecake! If you like your chocolate very rich and creamy this one is for you. It was a bit too rich for us and the base turned out crumbly too. I did start out doing the feathered design that Lorraine did on TV and in the picture in the book, but my hand was so shakey that night I had to resort to something a lot more abstract! If you fancy it the recipe is here.

Chocolate Marshmallow Brown Sugar Fudge

I’ve saved the best till last, we as a family loved this fudge. I love to cook and bake, but there is something about making home-made confectionary that really appeals to me. This was a really lovely chocolate fudge, you couldn’t eat too much of it (a good thing!) it really hit the spot. I played about with sweet making quite a bit when I was a teenager and have tried a number of chocolate fudge recipes in the past; and this is the only chocolate one I would make again… and I do so need to make it again! The recipe is here.

Next Up: Tea and Cake

One Sweet Cookie – Review and Recipe

This book has an author who is new to me, One Sweet Cookie Celebrated Chefs Share Their Favourite Recipes by Tracey Zabar published by Rizzoli in 2011. With thanks to Lucy and Rizzoli for my copy.

I should start off by staying that I had this one on my wishlist for ages before it was published, I buy a good number of books but my wishlist is always full to bursting! Anyhow, when I was offered the chance to review it - I grabbed it! J

It’s a clean and fresh book, lots of white and many tempting pictures to help you on your way to the kitchen and get baking. Chapters are *Brownies, Bars and Cakey Cookies *Nuts, Chips and Oatmeal Cookies *Pastry, Petit Fours and Chocolate Cookies * Meringues, Macarons and Macaroons * Biscotti, Spice Cookies and Seed Cookies * Sugar Cookies, Shortbread and Doughnuts. There is also a couple of pages at the back called ‘Tracey’s Bookshelf’ which I found interesting to read through.

The chefs who have given their favourite recipes are many and varied, for example: Florian Bellanger and Ludovic Augendre give a recipe for Raspberry French Macarons, Eli Zabar of E.A.T. gives Eli’s Mother’s Best Cookies, Lidia Bastianich of Lidia’s Italy gives Orange Cookies, Maida Heatter gives Palm Beach Brownies with Chocolate Covered Mints, plus a Bali Hai variation which I have made before and loved . These are just a handful of the many contributing chef’s and their recipes, Tracey herself also gives some recipes including Wicked Chocolate Biscotti and Sugar Valentines.

I have really enjoyed reading through this book and compiling my own list of to-make recipes. I find it fascinating to see the differences in what one person and another thinks of as their favourite cookie. Like a lot of Mums I had a number of school things to bake for in December, and I did something that I’ve not done before, I made three recipes from this book to go to events without testing them for just us first. It’s a perilous strategy, but for one reason and another December was a difficult month. Still I am really pleased to report that all three worked out perfectly first time! The three I made are below, and I have kindly been given permission to share one of the recipes with you, it was a hard choice I tell you!

The Baker Man’s Classic Thumbprint Cookies from Seth Greenberg of Seth Greenberg’s Just Desserts

These are delicious little mouthfuls, rich shortbread-y cookies filled with jam. I used the end of a spurtle to make my thumbprint holes. This is the first thumbprint cookie I’ve made but it won’t be the last, that is for sure.

Back-to-School Raspberry Granola Bars from Karen DeMasco of Locanda Verde

A really easy bar that is full of oats, pecans and raspberry jam. These were very good and have the bonus of being filling too.

Todd’s Favourite Triple Chocolate and Walnut Cookies from Todd English of Olives

Chef English devised this recipe to incorporate what his children like and also himself by adding the walnuts. These were outstanding chocolate cookies, and they had the bonus of still tasting good when cold the next day. Note: I have given you Todd’s recipe here, the only change I made was to substitute the peanut butter chips for more chocolate chips, as I didn’t have any, I also used less salt. I baked mine in a fan oven @ 170^oC for 14 to 16 mins. I have also found the recipe halves perfectly.

Todd’s Favourite Triple Chocolate and Walnut Cookies

From Todd English of Olives, with many thanks to Rizzoli for permission to post the recipe here from One Sweet Cookie by Tracey Zabar 2011.

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour (plain flour)

1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips

½ cup milk chocolate chips

½ cup white chocolate chips

¼ cup peanut butter chips (optional)

½ cup walnuts, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 350^oF. Set out three ungreased half sheet pans.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, granulated and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the flour mixture to the batter and mix until incorporated. With a silicone spatula, fold in the semisweet, milk, white, peanut butter chips (if using) and walnuts. Drop by large spoonfuls onto the pans. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the edges are nicely browned. Cool completely on wire racks. Makes about 36 cookies.

Next up: Home Cooking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale

Tiramisu Cake - Cake Slice Bakers January 2012

Well, I didn’t mean to skip two Cake slice bakers cakes, but that was the way life went in November and December last year. I’m back this month, even though I just missed the main post date of the 20^th of the month. Short and sweet this month, but better late than never!

This month’s cake is from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle published by John Wiley and Sons 2006. A Tiramisu Cake, a nice ‘pick me up’ (what tiramisu means) cake for the New Year. I’ve changed it and simplified the recipe a little.

Sweet coffee syrup soaked sponge, layered with a mascarpone and rum cream.The cream was very light in texture despite containing 500g mascarpone! The rum was a background note and the cream was set with a little gelatine, which probably helped the nice lightness, and meant there was no danger of the layers sliding apart. I tried to make it look like a cappuccino lol!

I liked this one, and am pleased I tried it even if I am late, it’s pretty for a dinner party and can all be done before hand. Do have a look at the Cake Slice Bakers blogroll to see how other members have made it

Next Review Up: One Sweet Cookie

Stilton, Bacon and Dried Cranberry Salad

Happy New Year to you all! It seems like a long time since I last posted, although in actual fact not soooo very long ago. Time always seems to go by too quickly in December, and last year was no exception. Christmas came and went, and I hope it was a good one for one and all.

The New Year has also been and gone and here we are in January, fairly chilly and in need of comfort food. Thoughts of a healthy eating regime is in my mind, I’m only willing to downscale a bit. Perhaps in the long run that will work better, no severe cutting back, so no big binge on sweet stuff when I fall off my chosen dietary wagon. I’m definitely upping my exercise though. We will see how it goes.

I have a lot of bits and pieces to use up after the festive period - stilton, dried cranberries, nuts and I do seem to have amassed a number of boxes of pancetta cubes in my fridge. I was wondering what to make with them all, and remembered a salad of Ina Garten’s that I saw in her second last cookbook Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics published in 2008 by Clarkson Potter. I’ve made a couple of recipes from the book:

Tuscan Lemon Chicken and Oven Roasted Vegetables.

Both of which were also good (click on recipe titles for recipes at The Food Network). The salad here is a variation on Ina’s Cape Cod Chopped Salad and was delicious and we all enjoyed it a lot. Dried cranberries, crispy warm bacon cubes, blue stilton for us (cheddar for little peeps), toasted walnuts and fresh apple plus an orange-maple dressing. I thought it was a fabulous mix of tastes and textures, one that I’ve been asked to make again, and not just to use the Christmas leftovers!

Stilton, Bacon and Dried Cranberry Salad

I’ve upped the add ins, down scaled the dressing and changed the lettuce from rocket to romaine, for Ina’s recipe look here. We still had some dressing left over, but I’m good with having some of it in the fridge for later in the week. This makes three to four main course salad plates.

½ cup walnuts,

130g Pancetta cubes

1/2 cup dried Cranberries

2 Romaine Lettuces

½ cup Blue Stilton cheese (or cheese of your choice), crumbled

1 Pink Lady Apple

Dressing

1 ½ tablespoons Cider Vinegar

½ teaspoon Orange Zest

1 tablespoon Orange Juice

1 slightly rounded teaspoon Dijon Mustard

1 tablespoon Maple Syrup

Salt and pepper

80ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Dressing: Whisk everything together in a bowl and set aside.

Salad: Heat a sauté pan and toast the walnuts in it for one to two minutes, stirring to prevent them catching. Dry fry the pancetta until cooked and crispy, drain the cubes on kitchen paper on a plate. Peel, core and chop the apple. To assemble tear or chop the leaves and arrange on plates, scatter over the apple, walnuts, cranberries, bacon and blue cheese. Finally whisk the dressing again and drizzle a little over the salads, I used about a tablespoon per person.

Next review up: One Sweet Cookie

How to Be a Domestic Goddess, Review and one copy to give away

Now for a post about a book that is dear to my heart. How to Be a Domestic Goddess Baking and the art of Comfort Cooking by Nigella Lawson first published in 2000 by Chatto and Windus. This was Nigella’s second cookbook (after How to Eat). I was asked a little while ago if I’d like to review this book, which of course I would! I have a copy from when it first came out, so I asked WH Smith if they would be ok if I gave away the copy I was sent to a reader on here, and they said yes, so thanks to WH Smith for the paperback copy to give away. Just leave a comment to be entered for the draw, first name out of the hat on 22^nd December 2011. Closing date for comments to go in the draw is 21^st December 2011 at midnight. THIS IS NOW CLOSED.

Pink Wafer Rose Bud Fairy Cakes

When this book came out I cooked from it obsessively for a good number of months. It’s a great book, a baking book to entice existing bakers, but with enough of a modern edge to appeal but the new bakers too. The book is nicely presented, although do be aware this is not a book where every single recipe is pictured, but the pictures are all tempting. I still love it today, all these years later. The main chapters are: * Cakes* Biscuits* Pies* Puddings* Chocolate* Children* Christmas* Bread and Yeast* and The Domestic Goddess’s Larder*.

Dolly Mixture Fairy Cakes

I have baked a lot from this book, it was in my pre-blogging days that this book came out, which is a shame, as I could have had some pretty pictures of cakes and cupcakes on here! I have been particularly taken with the cupcakes in Domestic Goddess and some of the recipes I have made are: Burnt Butter Brown-Sugar Cupcakes (which were a lot nicer than the title makes them sound), Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing, Blueberry Muffins, Baklava Muffins, Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes, Espresso Cupcakes, Night and Day Cupcakes, Cappuccino Cupcakes, Jam Doughnut Muffins, Chirstmas Morning Muffins and Christmas Cupcakes which are very beautiful as well as delicious.

Cake wise I’ve made a few too, Nigella’s Victoria Sponge is my go-to recipe, Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake is fabulous too - I sometimes make it as cupcake sponges too, Flora’s Famous Courgette Cake, Butterscotch Layer Cake, Boston Cream Pie, Marzipan Fruit Cake, Coconut Cake, Chocolate Marsala Cake – one of my favourite cakes and Chocolate Pistachio Cake. The Strawberry Shortcakes definitely need a mention too as do the Peanut-Butter Squares which are like home-made Reese Peanut Butter cups. This is not an exhaustive list of all I’ve baked from this book – but you get the picture, there is a lot to tempt the baker and eater!

Butter Cut Out Biscuits

I made these for a party a while ago.

Fairy Cakes

I’ve made these often, and here are three ways I’ve decorated them for parties.

Store Cupboard Chocolate-Orange Cake

I’ve made this one a few times too, if you use marmalade you get a bitter-ish orange taste, I prefer it with jam for a sweeter fruity vibe.

Banana, Cherry and White-Chocolate Cupcakes

These are very easy, a quick mash and stir is all that’s needed. I think these are super comforting. A number of years ago I made these when my hubby had a friend round, they were not that long out of the oven. Every time I have seen his friend since he sees me and thinks of these cupcakes!

Good luck with the draw if you enter and hope you win (NOW CLOSED), but if not WH Smith have a great cookery selection here.

The winner is the second commenter Aby Wilson - well done Aby, I'll be in touch and you'll soon have your book :)

Next up: One Sweet Cookie by Tracey Zabar

Monday Morning Cooking Club, Review

Ever since I read the information about this book I was itching to get my hands on it! Monday Morning Cooking Club by Merelyn Frank Chalmers, Natanya Eskin, Lauren Fink, Lisa Goldberg, Paula Horwitz and Jacqui Israel, published in 2011 by Hardie Grant Publishers. With thanks to Caroline and Hardie Grant for my copy.

It was worth the wait too. I would have to start off by saying that I’m not Jewish, but for some time now I’ve been buying and looking at books searching for ‘the’ book on Jewish food. I don’t know exactly what I was looking for only that I had not managed to find it, but let me tell you, for me - this is it!

So what is the Monday Morning cooking club? Well it is a Monday morning meet up for the six authors of this book, where they have hunted out recipes, tried and ditched, or tried and kept the recipes. The recipes in the book are the keepers, all accredited to their family owners, and there is a little information about each family, and how they came to Australia – the country where they all now live. I love the little snippets of family history, particularly as I get older where recipes come from their provenance and how they have evolved is ever more important to me.

Chapters are: *Our Story* Who we are* The cooks, their stories, the recipes* plus a glossary. The book is nicely laid out, with lots and lots of pictures, and they in turn are very doable and look like they have been cooked in a family kitchen.

There are so many recipes I’d like to try over the next while like: Chocolate Almond Florentines, Bienenstich, Mediterranean Fish Stew with Couscous, Sophie’s Orange Cake, Mamoul, Chicken Persian Pilau, Lauren’s Tuna Salad, Almond Kifli, Israeli Couscous Soup and Mum’s Crumb Cookies (date bars), Gina’s Hair Raising Honey Cake – to name but a few.

A lovely book all round, worth keeping an eye out for - interesting for the cook, but also the cookbook reader too. Here are the three recipes I’ve tried so far:

My Own Red Chicken

This is an oven bound sort of sweet and sour chicken. It’s punchy and loud, but I loved this recipe.

Perogen

These are suggested as accompaniments to soup. Little yummy savoury beef puff pastry morsels, well actually not so very little! Beef mince cooked with red wine, tomatoes, kecap manis and Worcestershire sauce, then encased in puff pastry and baked. They would be nice for supper with a good salad too.

Ginger Snaps

I love ginger snaps, but have never got round to making them myself until now, very easy and results in a good crisp gingery biscuit. A lovely biccie to have in your cookie tin or jar.

Next Review Up: One of Nigella’s classics - How to Be a Domestic Goddess with one copy to give away.

Rachel Allen Easy Meals - Review

Bacon and Potato Gratin with Buttered Cabbage

First off I didn’t mean to go awol, but we have been having problems with the computer, which I do hope are all fixed now. No Cake Slice Bakers today either but do have a look at the blogroll to see what my fellow bakers have baked.

I’ve been a fan of Rachel Allen for a number of years now, and in the past few years it’s with much anticipation that I’ve looked forward to her new books. Her latest one this year is Easy Meals by Rachel Allen published by Harper Collins Publisher in 2011.

It’s full of easy meals and a good number of them are fast too. Lots of picture of the finished dishes, you know really attainable ones. It has a clean layout, not as girly as some of her previous books. The chapters are: *Store Cupboard,* Fast and Fabulous,* Five Ingredients or Less,* One Pot, * No Cook, * and Fuss-Free Extras and Sides*.

I must confess when it first arrived I felt a bit underwhelmed, but I nipped down to our nearest shop and bought the ingredients for bacon and potato gratin and buttered cabbage (see below), and was converted!

A lot of photographs of the dishes, though not every single one is pictured. The book has a very clean, simple layout and for this reason it’s not my favourite Rachel book – I prefer the more feminine and embellished books she has. However, all the recipes I’ve tried have been good, and the book has grown on me.

I feel it’s a sort of follow on from Home Cooking, and that’s no bad thing for the family tea table. There is a TV series on UKTV Food to go with the book ‘Rachel Allen’s Easy Meals’ so that’s a bonus too! There are plenty more recipes I’d like to try, next on the list are: Vanilla Buttercream Squares, Chicken Skewers with Carrot and Apple Salad, Coconut Macaroon Meringue, Fish en Papillote three ways, Honey Mustard Pork Chops, Provencal Beef Stew and Coconut and Cardamom Pannacotta.

As well as the recipes below I’ve also made Rachel’s caramel rice pudding which was lovely, no picture to share here though, plus a couple of her quesadilla options and they were good too, likewise no picture.

Bacon and Potato Gratin with Buttered Cabbage

I made this one the day I received the book, to be honest I might not have made it, but it had to be something my local shop would sell, and this fitted the bill perfectly. Really tasty and well partnered with the cabbage. Even the little one liked it, and of late she has been so fussy. I’m making this again this week.

Carrot, Ginger and Coconut Soup

A great soup this one, smooth, creamy, carroty and a bit spicy from the ginger too, a keeper for sure.

Chicken and Chorizo Rice

This one is hearty and satisfying, I added in some cooked peas and sweetcorn for a few extra veggies and colour.

Chicken Biryani

Now a long slow biriyani, but this was another winner, lovely with a few dishes of bits and bobs, yum!

Little Banoffee Pots

These were yummy too, cream, bananas and toffee – what’s not to like?!

Chocolate Toffee Peanut Squares

I’ve been quite resistant in the past to using salted peanuts in my cooking, but here they do work, giving something familiar a new dimension, mmm.

Stir Fried Steak with Kale

Made this for hubby and I one night, and we both liked it, not cheap, but worth it for a midweek treat.

Pork Stir Fry

Or Rachel’s sweet and sour pork, enjoyed this, would add in a few more veggies next time.

Mediterranean Pasta

This is a one pot pasta dish where the pasta is cooked in with the sauce. I wasn’t sure about this method at all, but I overcame my prejudices and the resulting dish was fast and really delicious.

Next Review Up: Monday Morning Cooking Club