Recipe book of the month for March 2024
I’ve owned At my Table since it was first published and mostly used it for the cake / dessert recipes when entertaining others. Nigella’s sweet recipes always shine brightest in my opinion. The sticky toffee pudding, carrot & ginger cake and the white chocolate cheesecake (served with blueberry compote from the LT cake recipe) I highly recommend. However, as I hadn’t used as many of the savoury recipes I chose this for my March recipe book of the month.
Carrot cake:
This time I made it sans crystallised ginger, although I’ve used this recipe several times before with everything listed. It’s a favourite birthday cake for my carrot cake loving brother. It worked well without the ginger, I just used dry ginger, but obviously you could replace this with cinnamon only (or another spice combo.) We enjoyed the gingery carrot cake, it made a nice change from cinnamon. To decorate I used a lemon glacé icing on the top instead of cream cheese, using what I had rather than buy more ingredients. (Nigella’s cream cheese version with ginger pieces and walnuts is superb) I made it for Mothering Sunday tea, after cheese scones and mixed salad dressed with lemon & dijon dressing.
Chicken & pea traybake:
The timing’s off for a really crispy skin unless you want blackened nuggets of veg! I made this as written the first time and then reworked it for the other half of the ingredients, as I’m cooking for two. Worked well to have the chicken simply seasoned and drizzled with some oil at the top of the oven, and the vegetables in a shallow Pyrex dish covered on the shelf underneath. I swapped them over and uncovered the veg for 10 minutes or so, at the end. It made lots of veg just cooking half the quantity as they had not dried up. The rest went well with some fish and steamed potatoes the next night. The veg would make an excellent side dish bunged in the oven at the end of roasting a chicken. The fresh dill really elevates the flavours.
Meatballs with orzo:
Next time I would use the holy trinity of onion, carrot & celery as a base, plus peppers. They would incorporate more flavour and extra vegetables is always a good move. Better to make up all meatballs up but only cook half in the orzo, as the dish doesn’t reheat well. Orzo becomes gluey and sucks up all the liquid. It also can taste a much blander dish the second time around. The meatballs are *really* tasty! Would definitely make these again. We liked the parmesan and parsley combo.
Indian spiced chicken traybake:
Delicious!
Koftas:
Not as nice spice blend as a recipe I’ve been using for years, but good to try a different one
Adding page markers to the pasta with anchovies and mascarpone, the pavlova, the sunken chocolate cake and the retro chicken with masala & red grapes as we’re rewatching the series on BBC Iplayer and these appeal too.
If you’ve got a shelf (or shelves as in my case) filled with recipe books, but often find yourself using those online or something torn out of a magazine, for convenience or speed when ordering groceries, then choosing a recipe book of the month is a really nice way to actually focus upon a book you own. It takes some time to go through and choose recipes, but is well worth the effort. I’ve teamed up with a friend and we’ve given each other the approximate total number of cookbooks that we own – around 85 for her, 65 for me. We then pick a random number to count along the shelves and discover what’s next. It’s also a good way to weed out recipe books you’ve outgrown, or to realise why you have never used one. I’ve really enjoyed using At my Table this month.
25/3/24
RBoM June 2025
Radish & Cucumber Salad:
Used a fraction of the salt (as usual)
Coriander & Lime Chicken:
Skinless. Fresh and delicious
(Also made Nigella’s Black bean & orange bulgur wheat this month - her recipe for Ocado. Really recommend.)