New Cookbooks -- Ottolenghi

I've looked longingly at the Shakshouka recipe, but it's something that no one else in my household would eat.

Make the sauce, and create a ramekin version for yourself, while you make scrambled eggs for everyone else!

I'm so lucky to be surrounded by adventurous eaters, and vegetarians!

Well, I suppose they are "fish-aterians" and I hope so because I finally found some shad roe and I want to work that into a multi-course Easter Dinner for our son and his wife, and our tenants who are good friends of theirs. This will be a "no ham" dinner probably heavy on the Ottolenghi since that's what I'm into right now.

I've looked longingly at the Shakshouka recipe, but it's something that no one else in my household would eat.

Make the sauce, and create a ramekin version for yourself, while you make scrambled eggs for everyone else!

They're not really much for eggs in any form, other than the occasional frittata. Might have to just do a one-person version (or maybe invite a friend or two over who'd be willing to give it a try).

Continuing with my daily Ottolenghi meal from "Plenty" -- yesterday I made his okra recipe. I posted my picture of the mise en place in "What's Cooking?"

And I mentioned there that tasting the sauce I just wanted to sit down and eat all of it. That's not too unusual though because I felt nearly the same way about Martha Stewart's sauce to go with okra. But this was better because it includes peppers as well as tomatoes. I used a couple of Jalapeños and some big sweet red peppers. The flavor was just beautiful.

To be completely accurate, I also thought that adding a lot of minced preserved lemon gave an odd note to the sauce at the end, and I don't think I would do that again. He was playing lemon against coriander, which has an interesting lemony aspect, and that was fine but I liked what the lemon juice did better than the preserved lemon -- which to me has a slightly medicinal whiff, something a bit unnatural. Of course it's necessary in chicken tagine but not in this okra dish which is honestly more Ottoman than Moroccan.

Next time I make a middle eastern okra dish -- I will use the tiny frozen baby okra which I discovered at our local Greek store. I just wish they also had frozen fava beans.

My wife just brought home the copy of "Jerusalem" that's been sitting under her desk for the last few weeks. (This is not uncommon - she maintains an ongoing stock of "to be read" cookbooks.) I'm trying the chicken and caramelized onion dish for tonight's supper.

Thanks Mike -- everyone I know who owns that cookbook (except me) has made the chicken with rice and cardamom, and has raved about it.

I finally hit a recipe in "Plenty" that didn't impress me -- the multi-vegetable paella.

But I have returned to some favorites and made sweet potato cakes for company, who loved them -- and made the lentils with "burned" eggplant for my son, who said THIS is what eggplant ought to taste like!

I finally got my copy of Jerusalem back, I had loaned it a couple of times -- and now I'll be looking for something to try in that book.

PS just read your note in What's Cooking? and realized you ALSO made the chicken and cardamom dish! It's nearly unanimous.

It's easy to see why that one gets made first. It's straightforward and doesn't require a lot of time or exotic ingredients. And it works beautifully.

The artichoke gratin from Plenty is amazing! I needed to find frozen artichokes but that was the most difficult part of the recipe.

As mentioned in the "What's Cooking?" thread, I made the panfried sea bass with harissa and rose from Jerusalem last night. It was very good, albeit quite spicy, even with a reduction in the harissa content. It's a good one to make for company as everything can be done ahead of time up to the final re-warming of the fish in the sauce.

Thanks for the comments guys -- every time I hear that a dish works, I add it to my list.

Tonight I made the caramelized fennel bulbs with goat cheese. Very nice dish. I saw something a bit similar from Martha Stewart online -- she finished the sliced fennel by poaching with orange juice, but it included a sweet flavor and garlic which is similar. She didn't include the goat cheese -- goat cheese is really nice with cooked fennel, lemon zest, and sweetness.

EDIT -- I really use Louise to judge how successful these recipes are and we came and went missing each other last night. When she came home from playing her horn, she had a serving of the fennel and goat cheese and raved about it, she said it was really good with the red wine we had open -- a Spanish Bierzo (similar to Rioja). Definitely will be repeating this.

And last night I set up the "mise en place" for the smoky frittata (picture in What's Cooking). Cut a cauliflower into florets and blanched them and drained them. Got out the smoked paprika, measured 2 oz aged cheddar and 5 oz smoked mozzarella. Tried to buy some chives, couldn't find them, so got some scallions. This morning, grated the cheeses, cut up some of our own chives and the scallions, manufactured "creme fraiche" out of sour cream and yoghurt, and put together the frittata.

It was gratifyingly delicious and my son and his wife really enjoyed it. This one is also from "Plenty"

This is a relatively easy and probably fool-proof recipe which people ought to try especially if you like smoky flavors.

Because this was spread over 2 topics -- here and "What's Cooking" -- you don't see the entire story in this thread. But I posted in What's Cooking that my results looked just like the picture in the book and we liked it, and then JoAnn said that she made the same recipe and basically found it too bland and a little boring and in retrospect I had to agree with her. So I have spent some time trying to figure out how to "repair" the original recipe and give it some attention getting flavors. So when my wife brought home what may have been the world's largest head of cauliflower last week, I knew I had my chance. I did make the recipe as written but with these changes:

1) After making the cauliflower into florets I put them on a cookie sheet and sprayed with olive oil and salted a bit, and roasted in a hot oven (380 to 400) for 10 minutes -- then stirred around, sprayed a little more oil, ten more minutes. And cooked just a little longer looking for a bit of color. In the original the cauliflower is boiled and then fried.

2) Added more than 2 oz of aged cheddar, perhaps 3 oz, and got some decent smoked mozzarella instead of the pseudo stuff that was all I could find last time.

3) to the 2 tsp of smoked paprika I added 1 tsp of hot paprika

4) here is the kicker. I fried up 3 strips of bacon until crisp and then cut them up into bacon bits and stirred that into the egg mixture. I also grated a little good parmigiano into the egg mixture and then covered the top with grated parmigiano after the dish was in the cast iron skillet.

5) Last time we were using chives from the garden and just picked a bunch and snipped them up -- did not measure. Looking at this recipe, a lot of the subtle flavor is based on the LARGE quantity of chives specified. So after using up the chives we had in a flower pot I went to the store and got one of those plastic packets of chives and used the entire thing in the dish.

The results were rave reviews. Having the bacon and extra cheese moved the flavor profile over to that of a good quiche, while the roasted cauliflower gave the dish a lightness that a quiche normally lacks. With the modifications, I think this is a keeper.

Thanks for the mods on that, Frank. I've not made anything out of the Ottolenghi books for some time, but I had no idea it was as far back as last April. (Where did the time go???)

Thanks for the update, Frank. I am a cauliflower fan, so I will try it one more time. I also am not a particular fan of smoked mozzarella, so I believe I will be looking for a cheese substitute. I'll post if I do something in the near future.