Since I’ve been working at Ebury, this little book pops up time and time again in the bestseller list. I try to cook a few cookbook recipes every week, but am always falling back on my two favourite cookbooks – Economy Gastronomy and The Kitchen Revolution (can you sense a theme? I clearly like to cook in batches…). Anyway, I thought it was high time to try this one out, so this week I have been trying it out.

So far, I have cooked two recipes from the book, the Quick Meatball Casserole and Chicken with Creamy Bacon Penne.

The Quick Meatball Casserole was really easy to do, but I didn’t have any parsley and I think I added too much liquid somewhere along the line. My saucepan was full to the brim! Not very like the picture in the book, sadly! The end result is okay, and certainly beats lunch from the canteen, but it’s not thrilling. The sauce is (unsurprisingly given how much liquid I splashed into it) a bit watery and the meatballs aren’t spicy enough.

The trouble is any meatball recipe is that my friend Aline gave me her recipe for meatballs, which is the Best Meatballs Recipe Ever, so anything else has a lot of work to do to compare. I’d give it a 3/5.

The Chicken with Creamy Bacon Penne led to a tiny cooking disaster for me because I replaced the cream with crème fraiche without adding any additional water. OOPS! There was a tiny bit of burning as a result, but once it was sorted Oh My God, this is tasty. Definitely a 4.5/5 for me. The pasta comes out really flavourful and sauce is just so good. I could actually drink it. Okay, maybe not drink it, but certainly lick the plate, which is what I did last night…

Tonight I am cooking a sausage, broccoli and potato hash and Friday night it will be a quick and easy moussaka, so watch this space…

Has anyone else got this book? What do you think?

I decided not to post my photo of this meal because, to be frank, it is not an appetizing looking meal.  Sausage meat doesn’t look good at the best of times, let alone when it is covered in little green flecks of broccoli.  But this was really very tasty.  I modded the recipe a little bit - instead of horseradish, which I am not a fan of, I used mustard and used up the white wine from yesterday’s chicken dish.

For someone who stopped eating pork for over two years after seeing Babe in the cinemas (true story), I do like a good sausage dish.  Delicious. 4/5.

From Good Food: 101 One-Pot Dishes

This was really easy and easily the best meal I have had all week.  It’s kind of like a DIY moussaka.  I put a massive pot of cinammon spiced lamb and aubergine on the table, along with crumbled feta, chopped up mint, coriander and then some pitta bread and salad on the side.  It was AMAZING.  Really, really, very tasty.  It was given a 10/10 by both me and the friends I had over for dinner.  Definitely one to try again.

Well, my week of one-pot cooking is over and overall, it was really successful.  The dishes are easy and very adaptable.  Some of the timings and liquid quantities were a bit off, but I’ve also been using the pots I own which are big enough to take this much food, which aren’t many.  Next time I do these dishes, I will halve the quantity and use my smaller, but much better, dishes to cook them in.  Or just cook it all in my le creuset, which is what I did tonight…

From Good Food: 101 One-Pot Dishes

Apparently the Obamas ate the following on Thursday night:

Obama Thanksgiving Day Menu / 2009
From The White House

Menu:
Turkey
Honey-Baked Ham
Cornbread Stuffing
Oyster Stuffing
Greens
Macaroni and Cheese
Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole

Banana Cream Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
Sweet Potato Pie
Huckleberry Pie
Cherry Pie

Right, so where was my invite? That sounds tasty. If I had my choice, this is the menu I would have at Christmas this year, minus the turkey and oyster stuffing. F*ck Christmas pudding, I want 6 kinds of pie!

I also really really want to make these. Candied sweet potato marshmallows? Hello, there!

I made my own gnocchi for the first time last night.  I saw Angela Hartnett on last week’s Saturday Kitchen and was reminded that I had her book Cucina with an easy gnocchi recipe.

I made some on a whim quite late last night, so haven’t actually eaten any yet, but tonight I’ll be cooking them up with a mushroom ragu, also from Cucina.  They look pretty good and the rawish version I’ve had so far was tasty, so I’m pretty excited!  The ragu sounds pretty delicious too.

Update: Angela says that if you have to chew, you’ve made the gnocchi wrong.  I guess I did it right then! Melt in the mouth gnocchi with salty mushroom ragu.  I had some gruyere in the fridge, so had that on top. Yum.  I probably shouldn’t have had enough for two people though….