Cauliflower and Chickpea Curry

Dish: Cauliflower and Chickpea Curry

Difficulty: Well, I only had to look up one thing on Google...

Utensils Used: More wooden spoons, nothing special

Cock Ups: 2

Serves: 4-6

Recipe Book: Back to River Cottage Veg Every Day by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I seriously need to buy/borrow some different cook books.

Cooking: There was extra pressure in the Disaster Kitchen, as this meal was being made specially for guests. Okay, the guests were Mash and George, my cake slaves, and they knew my cooking standards very well from the Simple Chocolate Cake disaster, but I wanted to make a good effort.

I let them choose the recipe, only asking that they didn't chose something I'd done before, so I could blog about it here. They picked this cauliflower curry so I figured it would be relatively painless, given I'd almost successfully made a cauliflower curry just a week ago.

The recipe called for about 800g of cauliflower - described as one 'Medium-Large' cauliflower in the recipe. I bought a large one, and it quickly became clear that I had way too much when it wouldn't fit in the pan I was meant to be bringing it to a 'rolling' boil in.

This meant it took a very long time for the cauliflower to come to the boil - something the recipe made feel somewhat more instantaneous. So by the time I was taking them off the heat, straining and putting back in the pan to keep warm, there was no real need to be keeping them warm, as everything else was already ready. Oh well.

Also, cutting cauliflower is a very messy business. Is there a tidier way of doing it??

While the cauliflower was crawling slowly towards boiling point, I heated some sunflower oil (only as the recipe specified because it was what I happened to have...) and added 3 chopped onions. Except I did 4 because my onions were really small. Four chopped garlic cloves (goddammit recipes! I have a garlic crusher now...) and 1 teaspoon of freshly grated (cough, powdered) ginger were added, and the mix was then sautéd (that's what I had to look up on Google - it means to fry at a high temperature in a little oil to preserve flavour) for ten minutes.

Two teaspoons of ground coriander, two teaspoons of cumin, two star anise (an ingredient I had never used before) and a large pinch of dried chilli flakes (cough, chilli powder) were added, along with seasoning, then cooked for another five or so minutes. Note the cauliflower in the corner - it is producing some steam, but not yet boiling, even by this point.

A tin of plum tomatoes, chopped, were then added. Which makes no sense to me - why didn't it just ask for a tin of chopped tomatoes? Is there a difference?? Apart from saving me a job... Then 400g of chickpeas. I have no idea if I had 400g, as I looked for a tin in Morrisons, but they didn't sell them, so I had to raid Mum's freezer. Lucky she had them really. Not getting the recipe far enough in advance - cock up number 2.

The cauliflower were then added, plus enough water to almost cover the lot. The recipe said 100-200ml, but I just used the water I used to swill the juice out of the tomato tin. The mix was then brought to a simmer and left to cook for ten minutes or so.

Half a 'good handful' of fresh coriander, chopped, along with two teaspoons of garam masala were then stirred in.

I set my new table...

While adding copious amounts of water to the rice, which I had seriously over catered for, and waited for my guests to arrive.

Serve with a sprinkling of fresh coriander and warm naan.

Washing Up Required: Not too bad really.

Result: Quite adventurous in terms of ingredients, but oddly it tasted quite bland. I don't know if that's my cooking or the recipe... Probably my cooking. But it mostly tasted of tomato. Very fresh and healthy though, and not unpleasant.

Considering the extra pressure, I was pleased. Especially given I was suffering with a bad cold. I was very careful, not wishing to poison my guests, and made frequent use of my antibacterial hand gel:

...that's right next to a paintbrush in white spirit. Oh God, my kitchen is so unhygienic.

Taste Test: Maisie, being my kind sister, said the dish was very tasty. George said it had an odd flavour in it that he didn't like. Trying to work it out, he decided in the end it was the chickpeas...

Yes, they did pick the recipe.

The Boyfriend, usually terse and abrupt, did ask if I wanted his honest opinion, which turned out not to be that bad anyway.

'It's not exactly spicy, is it? It's more herby than a curry. I like the cauliflower, though.'

I think perhaps he was holding back for the benefit of our guests...

As I said, I found it a bit bland for all the spices that went into it, but it was a perfectly pleasant meal.

Overall Verdict: Quite easy to make, and very healthy. If chickpeas weren't such a pain in the arse to prepare, I'd make it again.

Cauliflower and Chickpea Curry

Aubergine Parmigiana

Dish: Aubergine Parmigiana

Difficulty: Fairly easy

Utensils Used: Colander, wooden spoon

Cock Ups: 2, but one, as you'll see, was not my fault

Serves: Original recipe serves 6, but I halved all the ingredients so mine serves 3

Recipe Book: River Cottage Veg Everyday by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Cooking: The Boyfriend and I are recent converts to the delights of aubergines. As a vegetarian, I should have come round much sooner, as they are pretty much a staple in a lot of vegetarian meals. I've always avoided them though, thinking they were slimy. I must have had a badly cooked one at some point in my childhood, as slimy is no longer an adjective I associate with them. Delicious, yes.

So after the insanity of the Spoufflé last week, today's Disaster Kitchen was a lot more sedate. Not entirely intentionally.


The recipe starts with trimming the ends off two medium sized aubergines, then slicing them lengthways, about 3-5mm in thickness. Kinda tricky when they bell out at the bottom, but I got fairly regular sized slices. They then needed to be put in a colander, lightly salted, for an hour to draw out the juices.


My colander is ridiculously small and isn't one of those that is freestanding, so I had to balance it in a pan, which created more washing up, but oh well.

While they were... juicing? I started heating about a tablespoon of olive oil in a 'very large, wide pan.' Well, all I had was a wok, so I used that. And speaking of things I don't have... Cock up one - if there was a tablespoon of olive oil in the wok, it was a very small one. Despite standing the bottle of oil on its head for a while. Vegetable oil it is. It might not have that same Mediterranean richness, but it's better than onions sticking to the bottom of the pan.


One onion and two cloves of garlic were chopped and fried gently on a medium heat for about ten minutes, 'until soft' (read: slightly brown in places where I didn't stir it properly). And here comes the cock up that wasn't my fault. The Boyfriend asked for dinner for about half seven, but then phoned me to say he was picking up a free table to replace our wobbly drop leaf one, and couldn't I put dinner off half an hour? I tried. I really did. But it's difficult to drop out of something and pick it back up again, so it ended up being closer to half eight than eight, and the onions were left standing for quite a long time.

Can't figure out how to rotate photos on blogger, so if the perspective looks a little weird there, that's why!


By the time I'd delayed the dinner enough to be 'ready' for eight, the aubergines had well and truly juiced. I wasn't sure what this meant, but apparently the salt draws out all the goo from inside them. Nice.

They were then washed and placed on a piece of kitchen towel to dry off.


Meanwhile, I was reheating my now chilly onions and garlic, adding two cans of plum tomatoes, which I roughly chopped in the pan, but didn't try to remove any stalky ends as instructed. I couldn't really see any stalk, but some of the ends were a bit tough, and could probably have done with removing, but I didn't fancy making the mess.

That was brought to a vigorous simmer, and left to boil down for about half an hour. It needed regular stirring, quite apart from stopping it sticking, it stopped it spitting everywhere all over my nice clean hob. I remembered the seasoning this time, although I didn't have a bay leaf to cook in it.

While that was cooking down, the aubergine slices were cooked in olive *cough* vegetable oil on a medium heat, a few minutes on each side until golden. I found it kind of difficult to judge when something purple and green went 'golden' but when they started smelling delicious, I figured that meant they were sufficiently cooked.

After that, it just needed to be put together and baked. A third of the aubergine slices is placed at the bottom of an oven proof dish, a third of the tomato sauce layered on top of that, followed by a third of a ball of mozzarella, broken into pieces, and a generous sprinkling of grated hard cheese. 

Rinse and repeat two times, and it's ready to go!

Cook in a preheated oven at 180 for about 20 minutes. The recipe says 30-40, but with it being smaller portions, I halved the cooking time as well. It needs to be golden and bubbling on the top, which after twenty minutes it was, so I think I improvised correctly there.


Washing Up Required: Less if you have a real colander, but overall not that much.

Result: Even with my bodged timings it looked and smelled delicious when it came out of the oven, perfectly bubbly and golden.


Taste Test: The Boyfriend, trying to describe what he thought:

'It is what it is, isn't it? I can taste what is in it.'

When he realised I would be posting this on the blog, he added:

'The aubergines are cooked perfectly. And I like this mush... But I prefer brown sauce.'

I thought it wasn't as nice as the restaurant version I had a while back which alerted me to this recipe, but then that probably had eight tonnes of salt and flavourings in it, where as mine tasted fresh and healthy. And the aubergines were perfectly cooked, if I do say so myself.

Overall Verdict: A slightly time consuming dish, though if done properly, the sauce could be reducing while the aubergines are juicing etc, which would reduce cooking time. However, it's dead easy, and really filling. Double up the quantities and the cooking time, and you have a perfect meal for a dinner party!

Parmigiana! (and again, dodgy camera angle. Sorry)

Spinach, Penne and Cheese Spoufflé

Dish: Spinach, Penne and Cheese Spoufflé

Difficulty: Really bloody hard

Utensils Used: Sieve, Electric Whisk, Wooden Spoon x 2, Cheese Grater

Cock Ups: 3

Serves: 4

Recipe Book: River Cottage Veg Everyday by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Cooking: This dish was destined to be a disaster as soon as the heavens opened right as I was about to go out and buy ingredients. Cosmic foreshadowing? I think so.

It starts off relatively simple: chop half an onion, measure 300ml of whole milk (first mistake - we only had half, but that doesn't matter, right?) and put into a pan with a few whole peppercorns and bring to just below a simmer. Take off the heat and leave to infuse. Easy.

While that was infusing, I got on with the next parts of the recipe - cooking 100g of penne pasta al dente, and wilting 250g of spinach. Already the number of pans this required was starting to exceed my dishwasher capacity, but I figured I could reuse a few for different parts.

When the pasta was cooked it was strained and mixed with a little oil to stop it sticking. The spinach was similarly drained and left to cool. So far so good.

Next, 50g of butter needed to be melted into a pan, then mixed with 50g of plain flour to make a roux. Cock up one - my flour was so old it had mites in it. Fortunately, my parents don't live far away, and after a quick phone call, my sister came round - armed with an umbrella against the deluge outside - with some flour.

I mixed the flour into the butter to make the roux and cooked for a minute, simultaneously bringing the infused milk back to temperature. I shouldn't have multitasked. It was too much for my poor brain. Because the next thing I did was strain the onion and the peppercorns out of the milk - only saving the wrong bit. I'd poured almost all the milk down the sink before I realised what an idiot I was being.

I put the onion and peppercorns back in the pan. By now, I'd used the measuring jug to hold the three egg yolks I'd separated out from their whites ready for the next stage. My bid to save on washing up had come back to bite me.

Judging the volume of milk by the white lines on the pan, I sloshed some more in. A quick blast on maximum heat got it to boiling point, then I left it simmering rather vigorously in an attempt to speed up the infusion process.

Meanwhile, I whisked up the four egg whites I'd separated out (one egg yolk in spare - not sure what to do with a spare egg yolk. Ideas?) The recipe book said to make them into 'stiff white peaks.' My nan's method of testing egg white stiffness is to turn it upside down over your head. If you didn't get a face full of egg white, they were stiff enough, but given my current run of luck, I wasn't about to try that. So I whisked them for a bit, until they looked good and peaky.

Returning to the roux, I strained the milk, correctly, then mixed it in to make a 'very thick' béchamel sauce. I then had to squeeze the water out of the now cool spinach (okay, I helped it along a little with the cooling by running the cold tap through it) and chop it up.

In my now stressed state, there was something deeply satisfying and therapeutic about squeezing the excess liquid from the spinach. The spinach, along with 75g of grated mature cheddar, a pinch of 'freshly' grated nutmeg and the penne pasta (which had stuck together despite the oil) was then stirred in, making a lovely green slop. 

The egg whites were then folded in, then the whole lot was tipped into a buttered dish and cooked at 190 for 25 minutes.

Only after I'd put it in the oven did I remember I was supposed to season with a generous amount of salt and pepper. Oops.

Washing Up Required: Quite a lot, despite my best attempts to minimise.

Result: While the Boyfriend said it looked like a blueberry muffin, the spoufflé did at least rise and brown as it was supposed to.

Taste Test: The Boyfriend described the taste as a bit 'beh bleh bur beg bar buh gur', specifying that this meant it was a bit cakey.

Personally, I thought it tasted quite nice, though a bit bland without the proper infusion and seasoning. The texture wasn't bad, and it was nicely filling. Though I probably should have served it with some salad or something.

Overall Verdict: Not the easiest or the quickest thing to make, but quite tasty, and a bit different. Perhaps a bit on the ambitious side for my particular culinary talents...

Spoufflé!