Category: 100 New Recipes

Wrapping up – 7 best recipes of the year

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As part of smugly congratulating myself on cooking 100 new things, I had a scroll through my round-up posts, and thought I would list down my very favourite and/or most momentous recipes from the year. [Most momentous because I’ve listed the first Ottolenghi salad I made, and I know I am tediously repetitious on the subject, but every single one of his salad recipes are the best salad ever. But I can’t make an entire list of Ottolenghi salads. So the first one can stand in for all of them.]

1. Carrot Soup with Tahini and Roasted Chickpeas, recipe number 3 featured in the first round-up. It was one of those recipes where I really appreciated how all the slightly fiddly steps came together into essential flavour components.

2. Slow Braised Pork Shoulder with Cider – recipe number 4 in the first round-up. My first real attempt at braising and with such a spectacular result.

3. Date & Spinach Salad – my first Ottolenghi recipe! Recipe number 22 in the third round-up. It was the first in my “holy hell, this salad is amazing – oh, it’s an Ottolenghi recipe” revelations for the year.

4. Thomas Keller’s recipe for roast chicken – recipe number 39 in the fifth round-up. It was so very simple and resulted in such perfect juicy chicken.

5. Tourtiere – recipe number 54 from the sixth round-up. The first time I’d made a proper meat pie in this way, and this pork pie has a wonderful combination of flavours.

6. Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie – recipe number 71 from the seventh round-up. Mostly because it reminds me of this period when we were eating ever so many strawberries, strawberry and rhubarb is such a wonderful sweet/tart combo, and it was an amazing pie.

7. Shooters’ Sandwich – recipe number 97 from the last round-up. Just a truly awesome sandwich, and I like how portable it is.

100 new recipes: part nine and last

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The project is finished! 100 new recipes in a year. It was great fun cooking so many new things, I discovered chefs that I’m now very fond of (Ottolenghi!) and made some completely new-to-me things such as yoghurt. I can’t say I kept up a consistent cooking pace and flagged at some points – my success owes a great deal to Vaxen’s unfailing enthusiasm and sourcing of recipes for me. Thanks Vaxen!

94/100: Stromboli – from this recipe. Basically a rolled pizza and pretty much as awesome as that concept sounds.

95/100: Eggplant Pie – from this recipe. Roasted eggplant is one of the most wonderful things in the world, and this silky cheesy pie is gorgeous.

96/100: Honey Maple Pumpkin Loaf – from this recipe. Lovely moist pumpkin loaf, greeted with toddler approval, during a period when so very few things were.

97/100: Shooters’ Sandwich – from this recipe. This whole concept is awesome. Squashing steaks and a caramelised onion mix inside a cob loaf overnight equals a really delicious sandwich, in wonderfully picnic-friendly slices.

98/100: Espresso Brownies – from this recipe. Very simple recipe makes a rather flat square of subtly coffee flavoured brownies.

99/100: Jamaican Black Cake – from half of this recipe. I didn’t make it as smoothly as a lot of picture you can see online, and it’s yet to be eaten – it smells amazing though (as I have it stored and am topping it up with rum, prior to Christmas Day). I totally stuffed up the burned sugar – it solidified into toffee. Update: post Christmas eating of cake – wonderful! Heady with fruit and rum, and didn’t obviously suffer from lack of burned sugar.

100/100: Cranberry & Pistachio Cookies – adapted from this recipe. I replaced the strawberries with dried cranberries and plums. Lovely buttery little cookies.

Et finis! I had so much fun actually completing a year long project that I’m now thinking about potential cooking projects for 2014, and trying not to settle on anything too excessively ambitious.

(Bonus 101/100 because it seems odd not to count the new recipe I made tonight – Ottolenghi’s Crisp Couscous Cakes from this recipe. These are gorgeous, albeit slightly tricky to keep together in neat little cakes – the perfect balance of crispness and softness, and the salty feta and sweet sultanas (in the case of my slightly amended recipe) worked beautifully together.

100 new recipes: part eight

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The penultimate update! Only seven recipes to go.

73/100: Herb, Tofu & Kidney Bean Stew – from this recipe. This stew had such a beautiful combination of flavours, although it was an irritatingly fiddly recipe in terms of the steps involved. Freezing, defrosting then baking the tofu makes it wonderfully chewy.

74/100: Brioche – from this recipe. A two day process, with the number of risings, but relatively easy to make otherwise, and deliciously rich and soft.

75/100: Sardine & Breadcrumb Pasta – from this recipe. Lovely fishy pasta, with the bite of capers and crunchy breadcrumbs, and very quick to make.

76/100: Curried Carrot Soup – from this recipe. Warmly spicy soup, and gets the toddler seal of approval when mixed with congee.

77, 78 & 79/100: Roast Chicken, Mushroom & Leek Stuffing and Waldorf Salad – Waldorf salad from this recipe, mushroom and leek stuffing from this recipe, and roast chicken from Joy of Cooking. All three recipes went so well together – juicy roast chicken, rich mushroom stuffing and the crisp salad.

80/100: Congee – from this recipe. It’s barely a recipe – chicken stock and rice – but the slow cooking makes such a delicious rice porridge, perfect for babies.

81/100: Banana Bread with Honey – from this recipe. I replaced the sugar with honey – this was a very banana-y banana bread, very well received by the toddler.

82/100: West African Peanut Soup – from this recipe. A lovely spicy sweet potato soup.

83/100: Late Night Coffee Brined Chicken – from this recipe. I over brined the chicken, and it was a little too salty, but the coffee gave it a really lovely flavour.

84/100: Carrot & Quinoa Cake – from this recipe. I didn’t make the frosting, replaced the cup of sugar with half a cup of honey and soaked the dates in hot water before adding them in. It was delicious – very moist, and I felt the quinoa gave it a nice nutritional boost for the toddler.

85/100: Upside Down Buttermilk Pear Cake – from this recipe. This is such a quick recipe – a really easy batter, and sliced pears and sugar and butter syrup making the upside down topping. Beautiful caramel flavours.

86/100: Pumpkin Chickpea Almond Butter Bars – from this recipe. Another really lovely light cake for the toddler, full of chickpeas, almond butter, pumpkin and eggs.

87/100: Broccoli Salad with Hazelnut Romesco – from this recipe. Smokey romesco sauce goes beautifully over the almost crisp broccoli.

88/100: Beet Pesto Pasta – from this recipe. This was such a pretty recipe! Pretty pink pasta, slightly less pretty when hurled around the place by a toddler during “dinner”, and such lovely earthy flavours, with crunchy bits of pistachio.

89/100: Bloody Mary Burgers – from this recipe. I hadn’t really considered not overworking mince in burgers before, but it apparently makes a difference – these were so juicy, with a nice spicy kick from the sauces.

90/100: Cocoa Banana Bread – from this recipe. Deeply rich chocolate banana bread.

91/100: Herb Roasted Lamb Chops – from this recipe. Essentially a basic herb marinade, but god it was good with the lamb – garlicky and delicious.

92/100: Banana & Sour Cream Pancakes – adapted from from Smitten Kitchen’s cookbook. These are amazingly rich soft pancakes, and the slices of banana caramelise well.

93/100: Piadinas – from this recipe. I’d never made a fried quick bread before, and these were great – very quick and easy to make. (And probably would have cooked more evenly in a better frying pan. I need a cast iron skillet.)

100 new recipes: part seven

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62/100: Braised Pork with Cabbage – from this recipe. Ridiculously easy, tender pork. Also, braising. I love braising.

63/100: Roasted Eggplant with Crispy Chickpeas – from a recipe in the Smitten Kitchen book, written about here. Nice easy unattended-in-the-oven dish, and the combo of silky roasted eggplant and crunchy chickpeas is great.

64/100: Bread Pudding – from this recipe. Lovely cheesy pudding, a big hit for breakfast with my one year old.

65/100: Grilled Chicken with Dry Spice Rub – from this recipe. For some reason I’d never made a dry rub before – this was great, lovely combination of spices.

66/100: Challah – from Mark Bittman’s recipe.

67/100: Mixed Bean Salad – from this recipe. Ottolenghi salad. Marvellous, as always.

68/100: Spiced Chickpea Salad – from this recipe. Another Ottolenghi salad (I served both this one and the Mixed Bean Salad at the same lunch). This one is amazing – the spices on the chickpeas are beautiful, and I loved the mixture of vegetables, including radishes.

69/100: Fresh Cheese – from Mark Bittman’s recipe, described here. A little bland, and could have done with more salt and more compression, but was lovely crumbled over salad, and an interesting experiment.

70/100: Oatmeal Cookies with Dried Peaches – from this recipe. Lovely chewy oatmeal cookies, and dried peaches are delightful.

71/100: Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie – from this recipe. Strawberries were plentiful and cheap here this winter. This was a beautiful pie – not only the beautiful pink filling, but the sweet and tart mixture of the strawberries and rhubarb was perfect. Looking at the photo of it makes me want another slice. I don’t make enough pies.

72/100: Red Wine Velvet Cake – from Smitten Kitchen’s cookbook, described here. This was a lovely birthday cake – the red wine doesn’t quite cook out and it has a headily intense flavour with the chocolate.

Challah

Celia5 Comments

While I was making this loaf of challah, glancing down occasionally at my son “playing” around my feet (in other words, unravelling a roll of alfoil and emptied a drawer of baking implements), I realised that I hadn’t been making bread recently because breadmaking is a little more difficult with a toddler, or proto-toddler, than it is with a largely inert baby. Needing to make sudden interventions or pick up a grizzling child is hard when your hands are covered in dough. This excuse sounds ridiculous when the kneading part of breadmaking only comprises a few minutes, but for some reason there is always some baby-related disaster during those few minutes. He has a knack for it.

This is Mark Bittman’s recipe for challah, the “traditional Sabbath bread of European Jews”. It is a lovely soft, eggy bread, but is best eaten on the day it’s made, as it gets a bit dry. Second-day-challah is perfect for bread pudding or French toast, both of which are met with enthusiastic proto-toddler approval.

ingredients:
650 grams flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 tablespoon honey
3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
325ml milk, warmed
poppy seeds or coarse salt for sprinkling, egg for egg glaze

Sprinkle the yeast into the warm milk, and leave it for five minutes, until it’s foamy and active.

Put the flour and salt into a large bowl. Crack the eggs and egg yolk into the middle, add the honey, then pour in the milk and yeast mixture. Mix everything together roughly with a fork, so that it’s mostly sticking together. Mark Bittman says if it’s dry, add in a little bit of milk until it’s wet enough to knead. He claims it is unlikely to be too wet. Mine was too wet, making me presume that I’d done something wrong along the way. Or perhaps Mr Bittman is simply too presumptuous about the state of my dough. (Oh, and obviously if it is too wet to knead, add a little bit of flour at a time until it’s kneadable.)

Check the whereabouts of your baby and hand them a distracting toy, because you’re about to get your hands covered in dough. Dump your rough mass of dough out onto your counter and knead away. It doesn’t need too much, just a few minutes until it’s smooth and elastic under your hands. Clean the bowl, and give it a light coating of oil. Pop the dough back into the bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and leave it for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until it’s roughly doubled in size.

Punch down the dough, and divide it into three similarly sized balls – weighing them if you want a nice evenly braided loaf. Leave the balls of dough to rest for about 15 minutes, then roll them out into ropes – about 36cm long, but there’s no need to be exact about it. You want your loaf to fit onto your baking tray (you should probably find a baking tray and lightly oil it, by the way). You can create all sorts of complicated braided loafs, or you can just plait your three strands like hair, and tuck the ends under. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes while you heat your oven up to 190C. Just before putting the bread in the oven, whisk up an egg and brush it over the loaf. (Generally, recipes call for an egg yolk, or an egg yolk plus a little water, but I’ve never seen the point of seperating an egg. This article on glazing kind of backs me up. Well, not really, but it concludes that many forms of glazing are acceptable.) If you like, sprinkle the glazed loaf with poppy seeds or coarse salt.

Cook the bread for 40 to 50 minutes, or until it’s nicely golden and sounds hollow when you tap the bottom of the loaf. I’m always a bit paranoid about undercooking bread, and I think I left this in a teenst bit too long, judging by the crust.

100 new recipes: part six

Celia4 Comments

45/100: Sweet Potato & Chickpea Salad – from this recipe. Roasted sweet potatoes are obviously delicious, and this is a great substantial salad that also works as a main meal.

46/100: Muesli Muffins – from this recipe. I made a batch of these and froze them, and they were very handy to take to work for morning tea. They aren’t exactly delicious little cakes – they taste like the healthy little muesli and apple concoctions that they are, but they’re very tasty, particularly when warmed up.

47/100: Paleo Pumpkin Bread – from this recipe. Using raw grated pumpkin in this dish gives it a very different flavour to something made with cooked pumpkin. It’s more vegetabley than the sweetness you’d expect from cooked pumpkin. This is very much a savoury loaf, and was nice with a bit of avocado spread on it.

48/100: Granola – from this recipe. Any sort of homemade granola would be delicious, I think, and this recipe was really nice – sweet and crunchy, the perfect topping for yoghurt. Homemade yoghurt, of course! (Well, if you’ve been well organised and haven’t broken your slow cooker. No, I haven’t done anything like that. Stop giving me that look.)

49/100: Raw Beet Salad – from this recipe. I hereby pronounce Yotam Ottolenghi the King of Salads. All of his salad recipes are wonderful. This one is crunchy and refreshing and generally divine.

50/100: Roasted Cauliflower & Grape Salad – from this recipe, and another Ottolenghi salad. The combination of roasted cauliflower, grapes and cheese sounded weird to me, and yet it is just the perfect combination of nutty roasted cauliflower, salty cheese and sweet grapes.

51/100: Split Pea & Bacon Soup – adapted from this recipe. (Don’t click on that photograph, it looks like someone threw up in a bowl. Well, refrain from clicking and also put that unpleasant image out of your mind.) I added zucchini and sweet potato, which according to a horrified friend made this an “abomination!” and not a proper split pea soup at all. Despite my cooking crimes, it was delicious.

52/100: Spiced Beef with Hummus – from this recipe. That blog does a great job of making this dish look vastly more appealing. It’s a deliciously simple little midweek recipe, and the spices and hummus go beautifully together.

53/100: Chickpea & Choc Chip Cookies – from this recipe. These are made from whizzed up chickpeas, and the only thing that really stops them from tasting like little lumps of peanut butter and chickpeas is the liberal use of chocolate chips. They’re reasonably tasty gooey little morsels, but unfortunately nothing made with chickpeas is ever going to compare to an actual cookie made from flour, despite people’s emphatic attempts to convince you that “no-one will know the difference!”. Yes, they will.

54/100: Tourtière – from this recipe and using this recipe for the pastry. Both recipes were excellent – the pastry is rich and buttery (just don’t think too hard about the amount of butter/fat in it), and this is a fantastic pie – not as intensely pork-y as it smells while the filling is cooking (which I was pleased about, not being a really enthusiastic fan of pork except in the form of bacon. I mean, obviously. I’m not insane.)

55/100: Grown Up Birthday Cake – from this recipe. The cup of olive oil and a cup of white wine included in this cake batter sounded odd to me, and I don’t know that I would have made it if it hadn’t been recommended to me. I should always disregard my instincts because this is lovely, with a very delicate flavour, and as per the title, a great birthday cake for adults.

56/100: Butter Tarts – from this recipe. These are like… gooey little caramel syrup bombs. Delicious.

57/100: Naan Bread – from this recipe. Soft, delicious naan bread – a quick accompaniment to curry for dinner.

58/100: Seed Loaf – from this recipe. Is this a “loaf of bread” that will “change your life”? No, it is not. Well, perhaps the discovery of seed loaf might change your life, I don’t know. I don’t judge. (I do, actually, but I do so in the full knowledge that I’m a terrible person, so that’s all right.) But it is a nice seed loaf with a good combination of nuts and seeds.

59/100: Quinoa & Vegetable Slice – roughly adapted from this recipe. How to get your reluctant partner to eat quinoa? And zucchini? Surround them with eggs and bacon. A good way of incorporating leftover cooked quinoa into a weeknight dinner.

60/100: Beetroot & Red Cabbage Slaw – from this recipe. It’s another Ottolenghi salad. I don’t need to tell you that it’s delicious. Of course it is.

61/100: Cashew & Cauliflower Mash – from this recipe. Put aside the fact that it’s inspired by a recipe from a Tim Ferriss book (I know, try and suppress your nausea), and that it’s described as satisfying carb cravings “without the guilt”, simply focus on the fact that this is cauliflower cooked with coconut milk and cashews. It’s beautiful. It’s amazing. You can eat it with everything. I am having a bit of a love affair with cauliflower at the moment though, so I might be slightly biased.

100 new recipes: part five

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36/100: Creamy Chicken & Asparagus Linguine. This barely counts as a recipe, but I’m including it anyway. I just fried asparagus, chicken breasts, garlic and cream together into a sauce, then stirred through linguine and served it over spinach leaves, which wilted. I’m having a spinach moment. Delicious spinach.

37/100: Succotash – from this recipe. I had no idea succotash was food, and not just part of a saying from a cartoon. A tasty, spicy vegetable dish.

38/100: Roasted Eggplant & Pickled Beet Sandwich – from this recipe. I’m sure you will agree that roasted eggplant is one of the most delightful things in the world. Eaten with goat’s feta and a herby beetroot salad, it becomes heavenly. This is a fantastic sandwich combination.

39/100: Roast Chicken – from this recipe. Such a simple technique, yet results in the most perfect, tender, moist chicken. Brilliant. I also saved the carcass for stock and felt like the most accomplished homemaker ever.

40/100: Chicken Pot Pie – adapted from this recipe. I continued my role as most accomplished homemaker ever, and used up the leftover roast chicken in a pie. I know. I can see you gasping with awe from here.

41/100: Deep Dish Pizza – adapted from the various recipes and tips in this forum. Possibly the unhealthiest thing I’ve cooked this year – a very oily dough, meat and cheese laden filling, and utterly delicious. Although it does leave you not particularly wanting pizza in your near vicinity for some time afterwards.

42/100: Shepherd’s Pie – adapted from this recipe, using lamb mince rather than slow cooked shanks, and a dash of whiskey, which adds a beautiful depth of flavour.

43/100: Carnitas – from this recipe. Such a simple way of slow cooking pork shoulder, delicious on burritos with coleslaw and corn salsa.

44/100: Kosheri – from this recipe. A bit of a pain in the arse to make, with lots of things to cook separately, but very tasty.

Almost halfway! And slightly ahead of schedule.

100 new recipes: part four

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26/100: French Toast – from this recipe. This was such an easy breakfast – crispy delicious toast with maple syrup.

27/100: Quick Flatbreads – from this recipe. This is a very quick, fluffy flatbread – easy to get on in the late afternoon for fresh bread with dinner.

28/100: Meatloaf – from this recipe. I really liked this meatloaf and thought the method of cooking it up on a rack gave it a nice crust – however the husband prefers the meatloaf recipe in the Nourishing Traditions cookbook.

29/100: Malaysian Lamb Curry – from this recipe. This was delicious – another go-to curry recipe for me now (and another great way to use a cheap cut of lamb).

30/100: Moroccan Carrot & Chickpea Salad – from this recipe. This is quite a sweet salad, and is a lovely addition to a barbecue – given the sweetness, it would be nice to serve it along another salad with a bit of bite.

31/100: Caramelised Onion Tart – pulled together from a number of recipes online and something my brother made once. Slice three or four onions into half rings, caramelise them with fresh thyme and balsamic vinegar, spoon over squares of puff pastry with a little parmesan sprinkled on top, and bake for 20 minutes or so until the pastry is nice and crisp.

32/100: Fresh Egg Pasta – adapted from this recipe. I don’t know that fresh pasta is ever really successful without a pasta roller, or a great deal of patience, which I don’t have. This was nice, but I didn’t roll it thin enough and consequently it was a little too tough.

33/100: Braised Vegemite Lamb – loosely adapted from this recipe and a desire to make a really “Aussie” dish. I rubbed a lamb shoulder with the vegemite and molasses mixture from that recipe, seared it in a casserole dish, added onions and a bottle of Cooper’s Pale Ale, and baked it for 2 hours at 160C. I added a few chopped carrots and a can of chickpeas, then cooked for another half hour before serving with rice and salad. The vegemite marinade is beautiful – subtly salty and malted, goes wonderfully with the beer.

34 & 35/100: Chili and Cornbread – from these recipes. Wonderfully spicy and warm chili, and then the slightly overcooked (I really would like to try it without forgetting about it for 15 minutes) but otherwise deliciously crisp and cheesy cornbread on top, soaking up the chili.

100 new recipes: part three

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18/100: Braised Eggplant & Prunes – from this recipe. I’d never slow cooked eggplant before, and it’s beautiful – silky and soft, in a lovely broth.

19/100: Homemade Yoghurt – adapted from this recipe. This is so easy to make and tastes great, plus it feels tremendously satisfying eating homemade yoghurt with your breakfast.

20/100: Red Wine Braised Beef Short Ribs – from this recipe. I actually used something described as beef spare ribs that I found in Woolies, and decided during some mid-shopping-trip googling were similar enough. The husband found them a bit fatty, but I loved them – they cook down in the red wine until they fall off the bone, and taste incredible.

21/100: Beetroot & Caramelised Onion Tart – adapted from this recipe. First up – this pastry recipe is incredible. So simply to make, and so crunchy and tasty. The recipe needs a bit of tweaking to work – I couldn’t roll out the pastry, but it presses perfectly well into a baking tin. I think you could take it down to two beets, rather than three, and they need to have some of the moisture taken out of them – drained on a paper towel, or given a squeeze – I had to cook the tart for ages before it finally set.

22/100: Date & Spinach Salad – from this recipe. This salad is incredible. Seriously. Such an amazing blend of flavours, the crunchy bits of pita and almond next to the marinated dates – I want to make it again already.

23/100: Hot Yoghurt & Barley Soup – from this recipe. I was a bit sceptical about this at first – hot yoghurt? Basically raw egg? But it’s really nice – refreshing, despite being a hot soup, sour and minty, and the barley makes it nice and filling.

24/100: Quiche Lorraine with Carrot & Oat Pastry – I used the pastry from this recipe. I pre-baked the pastry at 180C for about 15 minutes, then fried bacon and onion together, added it to the shell, and poured over a whisked mixture of 5 eggs, 2 cups of milk, salt and pepper. I think it probably cooked for between 30 – 40 minutes before it was set.

25/100: Baked Eggplant with Orzo – from From this recipe. A lovely comforting pasta dish, cheesy but not too cheesy, with silky little chunks of eggplant. Delicious.

100 new recipes: part two

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Remember how I declared I had a marvellous project to make 50 new recipes this year? Well, I was making such good progress that I changed my mind and made it 100. So! You’ll find recipes 1 – 9 here, and below are 10 through 17:

10/100: Coffee Braised Beef – adapted from this recipe. I think the chunk of rump I used was not the best cut for this recipe – it wasn’t as melt-in-the-mouth as I would have liked – but I loved the flavour of the coffee with the beef. I increased the coffee to just over a cup and it gave a dark intense flavour to the meat. (I should note the husband wasn’t particularly keen on it.)

11/100: Maple-Brined Pork Chops – from this recipe. I got a bit distracted and left these in the brine for… I don’t know, perhaps 18 hours rather than the 6 in the recipe. They were a bit too salty as a result, however they were wonderfully moist and flavoursome, and this was a very low effort thing to do with meat prior to grilling it. I definitely want to try the brining technique again, perhaps with chicken.

12/100: Braised Cabbage & Ham – from this recipe. The husband declared this very bland, but then admitted that he didn’t like cabbage. I really enjoyed it, so I think it will depend on your fondness for cabbage.

13/100: Cinnamon Buns – from this recipe. These buns were amazing, so soft and buttery and cinnamony and delicious. The recipe is enormous and I would recommend halving it. It also rises nicely overnight in the fridge, ready to be rolled out and baked in the morning.

14/100: Beef & Quinoa Meatballs – from this recipe. This is a nice way of disguising quinoa for anyone who isn’t overly fond of it. They don’t really cling together in order to be rolled into balls – it’s more a method of squodging the mixture together. Very delicious, and a little healthier than your average meatball recipe.

15/100: Sausage & Lentil Soup – adapted from this recipe (and only adapted because we didn’t quite have the right ingredients – I want to try it again and follow it properly). It can be made vegetarian by leaving out the sausage, and I think would still be a lovely soup. As is though, it’s delicious – spicy and filling, although perhaps a bit more suitable for cooler months.

16/100: Wine Braised Leg of Lamb – from this recipe. It’s a really terrible photo I’ve put on Flickr – in fact, probably best not to click that link. It’ll put you off making it. It’s hard to make hunks of meat look attractive in photos taken on an iphone at night. This was good, lovely and garlicky, but definitely not my favourite braising recipe for lamb.

17/100: Beef with Garlic & Pepper – adapted from this recipe. When you’re spending half an hour grinding pepper into a bowl (slight exaggeration), it feels like it’s going to be far too much, and yet it just adds a nice warm depth of flavour. This is a lovely easy meal to make in a wok.