Cooking The Books - Nigella's Kitchen

In the continuing Cooking The Books (CTB) meetups, this time we wanted to test out one of the queens of the kitchen, Nigella Lawson's new book, Kitchen - Recipes from the Heart of the Home. Nigella's recipe are notoriously easy but as we found out, can also be perfectly delicious. Having tested out quite a few recipes in the book, I would buy it and cook from it regularly.

You can read about previous Cooking The Books meetups here
Cooking The Books - Jamie's America
Cooking The Books - Bill Granger's Holiday
Cooking The Books - David Thompson's Thai Street Food

As usual, we cooked at the The Cooking Space thanks to their generosity. The space can be hired out for use throughout the year and it has lots of great professional equipment and even a dining area.

You can read about this meetup by
I-Hua
Michele
Cherrie

Other participants were
Kat with baby
Kat
Agnes
Celeste
Emma

Let's start with the savoury dishes. Cherrie made the African Drumsticks/Wings. I love this dish with its caramelised soy marinade.


Agnes made Beer Braised Pork Knuckles. How can you go wrong with pork knuckles cooked to a perfect crisp. I couldn't really taste the beer but maybe it helps to crisp it up?


The dish of the day, and you won't hear this from me too often, was the Mexican Lasagna. This was a vegetarian dish and contained beans, corn and various vegetables. The flavours really worked together and was cooked perfectly by Kat.


Kat (with baby) made a Risotto Bolognese. The risotto was definitely cooked well, and the flavours were quite good.


Kat (with baby) also made Pigs in Blankets. Well, how can you go wrong with sausages wrapped in pastry.


Other savouries that we had and not pictured were
-A simple Avocado Salad by Kat
-Caraway, Garlic Apples and Potatoes by Agnes. They were a really good combination.
-Turkey Meatballs by Michele. These weren't bad, but sort of dull in flavour compared to Jamie's America meatballs that Michele made at a previous meetup.
-Rocket and Lemon Cous Cous by Michele. Simple and tasty.
-Spanish Chicken with Chorizo and Potatoes by me. The chorizo really gave the chicken a good kick and the herbs in it were good.
-Chorizo and Chickpea Stew by Celeste, full of chorizo goodness.

For desserts, Celeste made a Key Lime Pie. It was sharp and sweet, and I liked it. I think Celeste used regular limes so it didn't have the taste of the usual key lime pie.


Agnes made a Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake. As you can see from the photo, it was wickedly good but also super duper rich. One tiny slice is enough.


Other desserts we had were
-Coffee Toffee Meringues by Cherrie, which were actually my favourite dessert of the day. Light meringues were doused with a coffee toffee.
-Michele made Lemon Meringue Fool, meringues, lemon zest and cream. This was also very good.
-I-Hua made Pistachio Fudge, which were super decadent.
-Emma made a Torte Al Giandula, which techically was from Nigella's Domestic Goddess book but still totally delicious.
-Lastly, I made a Venetian Carrot Cake. With carrots and almond meal, I thought this cake would be amazing but instead was rather awful. I'm not sure what went wrong but I think it may have been that the almond meal was stale.

And that wraps us another wonderful Cooking The Books meetup, where as usual I went home so full that I didn't need dinner and needed a massive afternoon nap.