I have purchased the peanut rayu and look forward to trying it! If you haven’t tried it I can’t recommend Laoganma crispy chilli oil enough. It’s a total game changer! Crispy! Salty! Sweet! Spicy!
Brilliant as ever, India, thank you! Just to share… I mélanged a couple of your ideas - cooked moules marinières - didn’t have any spare wild garlic, but did have WG pesto, which I’d ’prepared earlier’. Added a couple of dollops to the mussels pan and it worked a treat. The pesto kind of melted into the creamy, wine-y sauce and the moules were flecked with WG…
I have been testing out the Guardian Feast App and it’s great. I have been buying the paper version of Feast since issue 1 and I have an awful lot of binders stuffed with Feast! Not sure I will part with them, but I am loving the App.
One of the best things I have done was to order and plant about 30 wild garlic corms in a rather dull part of the garden. Most of them got through the first year and now there’s a thriving patch. Very satisfactory!
For west London dwellers, a heads up regarding rose ice cream. About a month ago we had dinner with my husband’s parents at Potli Indian Marker Kitchen in Hammersmith. It’s very good there. My father-in-law had paan ice cream for pudding - rose, cardamom and a little mango. I had a small taste and nearly cried - to use Ken’s favourite word (apart from ‘beach’), SUBLIME!
I was pissed off with my father-in-law because he’d made a crack about my weight, so I was sulking and didn’t have pudding. We’ll go back and I bloody well will. (My other heads-up is if you go there, don’t have the cardamom crème brûlée, no matter how delicious it sounds. My husband did and he couldn’t eat it because it was overpoweringly cardamommy. I had a taste and it knocked me sideways. Make it at home instead and don’t forget a crisp biscuit to go with.)
How delicious (also I didn't know you could grow wild garlic - I thought it just appeared in special places). Am going to tell my son who works very near there.
I had so much wild garlic in my last garden. This time I have an abundance of three cornered leek, which has a strong garlicky onion aroma. I wonder if I could use that instead?
As a single person I do like a little poussin from Gressingham, just up the road – though they don’t come in free range, which bothers me. Tonight I will be going DOUBLE WG: under the skin of my little chicken, as you say, and then layered into a dauphinoise. I have a small WG patch in my garden, which I feel disproportionately smug about.
Do you know what: it was one of the best solo dinners I've ever made myself. Had it with local asparagus too. Would have paid £35 in a posh restaurant. Was probably a week's calories in one go but shrews eat 125% of their body weight each day which makes me feel better about it. Now making chicken stock from the remains for a WG and pancetta risotto.
Have worked it out - it's from the huge green A-Z one. EatYourBooks - I haven't got this because I think there aren't enough UK books, ie that it's broadly US - but am I wrong? Will download immediately if yes. I never remember where anything is from and then spend ages looking through books.
You are wrong - they have indexed most uk books that matter! There is a charge per year but it's so worth it. You set up your virtual cookbook Library plus favourite magazines and blogs etc and then you can search for recipes, ingredients whatever within your virtual library. I love it - it helps me remember what books recipes are in plus tells me what recipes I own within my library for any ingredient or sets of ingredients that take my fancy! X
This week I cooked Mutter Paneer from a recipe in 30 Minute Indian by Sunil Vijayakar, a long ago book recommendation from you, India. Lovely to be able to say big thanks, now, as it’s provided many family weekday meals - well-thumbed and has taken on a turmeric hue. Now off to order peanut rayu 🌶️ ❤️
We actually couldn’t live with the peanut rayu. I talk about it all the time, we also have the extra hot one, have you tried it? It’s punchy. It does really need to warm up doesn’t it. Have just ordered a box of avocados to be delivered in May, will be interested to see how that all turns out! Thanks India, enjoy your day
I'd fully stopped buying them from UK supermarkets as they were always so disappointing , so fingers crossed these will reignite my love for them. Such a good idea, but I wonder why we're not able to buy things from UK farmers? Obvs nectarines and avos not applicable, but vege boxes etc should be good no? Maybe I'll ask them.
Those boxes! I’m sitting in bed with coffee and dreaming of abroad and the luxury of a whole box of deliciousness. And so clever of you to find all these brilliant things to tempt.
Am just catching up in a departure lounge at Heathrow and find myself nodding along sagely to the unlikelihood of me ever scrubbing the barnacles off a mussel before cooking it . Knew that I was in good company
Made the fish and fennel …. Lovely 😋
I have purchased the peanut rayu and look forward to trying it! If you haven’t tried it I can’t recommend Laoganma crispy chilli oil enough. It’s a total game changer! Crispy! Salty! Sweet! Spicy!
Brilliant as ever, India, thank you! Just to share… I mélanged a couple of your ideas - cooked moules marinières - didn’t have any spare wild garlic, but did have WG pesto, which I’d ’prepared earlier’. Added a couple of dollops to the mussels pan and it worked a treat. The pesto kind of melted into the creamy, wine-y sauce and the moules were flecked with WG…
I have been testing out the Guardian Feast App and it’s great. I have been buying the paper version of Feast since issue 1 and I have an awful lot of binders stuffed with Feast! Not sure I will part with them, but I am loving the App.
Recipes printed on paper have a special appeal I think, whether they're a book or something torn out of somewhere.
If you don’t like the feel of putting anything under the skin of a chicken then use a spatulas to do this, it works well.
Good idea!
One of the best things I have done was to order and plant about 30 wild garlic corms in a rather dull part of the garden. Most of them got through the first year and now there’s a thriving patch. Very satisfactory!
For west London dwellers, a heads up regarding rose ice cream. About a month ago we had dinner with my husband’s parents at Potli Indian Marker Kitchen in Hammersmith. It’s very good there. My father-in-law had paan ice cream for pudding - rose, cardamom and a little mango. I had a small taste and nearly cried - to use Ken’s favourite word (apart from ‘beach’), SUBLIME!
I was pissed off with my father-in-law because he’d made a crack about my weight, so I was sulking and didn’t have pudding. We’ll go back and I bloody well will. (My other heads-up is if you go there, don’t have the cardamom crème brûlée, no matter how delicious it sounds. My husband did and he couldn’t eat it because it was overpoweringly cardamommy. I had a taste and it knocked me sideways. Make it at home instead and don’t forget a crisp biscuit to go with.)
How delicious (also I didn't know you could grow wild garlic - I thought it just appeared in special places). Am going to tell my son who works very near there.
Market Kitchen, not Marker Kitchen. Grrr.
I had so much wild garlic in my last garden. This time I have an abundance of three cornered leek, which has a strong garlicky onion aroma. I wonder if I could use that instead?
I think you can, but don't quote me - not 100% sure.
As a single person I do like a little poussin from Gressingham, just up the road – though they don’t come in free range, which bothers me. Tonight I will be going DOUBLE WG: under the skin of my little chicken, as you say, and then layered into a dauphinoise. I have a small WG patch in my garden, which I feel disproportionately smug about.
You should feel smug. Was your dinner nice? YUM in a dauphinoise.
Do you know what: it was one of the best solo dinners I've ever made myself. Had it with local asparagus too. Would have paid £35 in a posh restaurant. Was probably a week's calories in one go but shrews eat 125% of their body weight each day which makes me feel better about it. Now making chicken stock from the remains for a WG and pancetta risotto.
If you tell me a couple
Of other ingredients in the river cottage recipe I can identify the recipe book - my eatyourbooks subscription is the most useful thing ever! C
Have worked it out - it's from the huge green A-Z one. EatYourBooks - I haven't got this because I think there aren't enough UK books, ie that it's broadly US - but am I wrong? Will download immediately if yes. I never remember where anything is from and then spend ages looking through books.
You are wrong - they have indexed most uk books that matter! There is a charge per year but it's so worth it. You set up your virtual cookbook Library plus favourite magazines and blogs etc and then you can search for recipes, ingredients whatever within your virtual library. I love it - it helps me remember what books recipes are in plus tells me what recipes I own within my library for any ingredient or sets of ingredients that take my fancy! X
I’m having a blissful Sunday morning batch cooking whilst listening to Mayflies narrated by Andrew O’Hagan- so good- thank you for the recommendation!
How lovely!
“Should taste perky” my favourite of all the tastes
Mine too.
And Monika Gowardham is one of my absolute go-to recipe writers !
She's fantastic. Have you got her most recent one, Tandoori Home Cooking? So good.
This week I cooked Mutter Paneer from a recipe in 30 Minute Indian by Sunil Vijayakar, a long ago book recommendation from you, India. Lovely to be able to say big thanks, now, as it’s provided many family weekday meals - well-thumbed and has taken on a turmeric hue. Now off to order peanut rayu 🌶️ ❤️
I still have that book too and use it all the time - such good recipes. The peanut rayu is amazing.
We actually couldn’t live with the peanut rayu. I talk about it all the time, we also have the extra hot one, have you tried it? It’s punchy. It does really need to warm up doesn’t it. Have just ordered a box of avocados to be delivered in May, will be interested to see how that all turns out! Thanks India, enjoy your day
I feel evangelical about the peanut rayu. Will try the extra hot, didn't know it existed. Isn't CrowdFarming such a good idea? The avos are excellent.
I'd fully stopped buying them from UK supermarkets as they were always so disappointing , so fingers crossed these will reignite my love for them. Such a good idea, but I wonder why we're not able to buy things from UK farmers? Obvs nectarines and avos not applicable, but vege boxes etc should be good no? Maybe I'll ask them.
Without the peanut rayu 🙄
Those boxes! I’m sitting in bed with coffee and dreaming of abroad and the luxury of a whole box of deliciousness. And so clever of you to find all these brilliant things to tempt.
It IS pure luxury to have a box of avocados.
Am just catching up in a departure lounge at Heathrow and find myself nodding along sagely to the unlikelihood of me ever scrubbing the barnacles off a mussel before cooking it . Knew that I was in good company
Not scrubbing off barnacles while not going to Latitude - we are as one.