Supper for a song
By Tamasin Day Lewis
Last year was the year of tight purse strings and cutting back.
Many people busk in a new-found love for eating in and cooking. Whether we physically have to or are now capable of appreciating such simple pleasures the fact is that we do want to take advantage of all the food that is available to us and make the most of it.
Of course, if you are like me you will end up cooking far too much and buying spices, herbs and whatnot in bulk to “save” which means supplies are left dozing in the cupboard after they’ve been used the one time, so I feel that, as well as giving some delicious recipes in her latest effort, Day Lewis inspires her readers to be a little bit more daring, experiment with what they have at hand and spruce it up with a few extras for a fantastic brand-new dish.
I have been pouring over the beautifully descriptive recipes for the past couple of weeks and picked the Braised chicken and rice with orange, saffron, almond and pistachio syrup as my first try with wonderful results. A dish that I’ll definitely be making again, especially since I bought a rather pricey bottle of rosewater for it that I doubt I’ll be using in anything else any time soon!
Next on my list a fantastic beef stew with mustard and thyme dumplings to ease the cold winter nights that have now landed upon us and leftover chicken from our Sunday roast went straight into her Lemon and chicken risotto.
I’m also eyeing up the spicy chicken wings with blue cheese dressing to serve up at a Christmas dinner with friends – A scrumptious nibble that is bound to cheer everyone up.
I have only a couple of bones to pick with this book, mainly the photography that seems to have lost the vibrancy of the original colours and a couple of lax timings – I mean, it has to be either 5 or 10 minutes to reduce a syrup, but not somewhere vaguely in between. Very confusing for a beginner…
But all in all this is a good cookbook, one that I will be definitely be using over and over and one that I would recommend to those with over-flowing kitchen cupboards!
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