Peanut Butter Protein Shake (NYC)

My least favourite fruit
ever

The title of this is pretty self-explanatory. As you probably guessed, it's a shake made using peanut butter. 


My only problem with a lot of shakes is that they use banana. I don't mind it so much when they have another ingredient which could overpower the taste of it but I don't generally like things that taste like banana. This recipe is one of those that uses banana to thicken the consistency, but I was hoping that the peanut butter would drown out the banana flavour. Unfortunately for me, I'm not a big fan of peanut butter either so it didn't look too good. Nevertheless, I was oddly optimistic for this recipe. 

Soph and I aren't new to making shakes, we love making smoothies and juices and we used to have Whey protein shakes quite regularly. We even started a 7 day juice diet a couple of months ago. I say started because we made it precisely one shake into the diet.  Not because we got too hungry, or because it didn't taste good. No. We stopped because the first shake we made was so filling that we couldn't drink enough of it and they didn't keep well.  The diet that we were doing needed you to drink 7/8 shakes a day and we came to the conclusion that, if the shakes weren't going to keep well and look appealing after being in the fridge all day, it wouldn't be practical to do it while I was working. You never know though, maybe we'll give it another go some time since the one we made did actually taste quite nice. 

Anyway, when it came to this recipe, we were quite looking forward to giving it a try.  It sounded nice and looked great.  

As those of you who've made shakes before will know, the recipes generally just comprise putting everything in a blender and turning it on. This recipe is no different. Super simple and quick to make. 

I was, however, disappointed by the outcome.  I only got three sips in before I had to stop drinking it.  It tasted, surprise suprise, like peanut butter and banana.  That wouldn't have been as big a problem though if it didn't also have a strange powdery taste to it.  We think this is because of the amount of Whey protein in it but, either way, I'm not likely to try this one again. Soph liked hers more and drank about 2/3 of it before the powdery taste got to her and she had to stop. My brother-in-law did manage to drink all of his but he didn't seem like he enjoyed it all that much. So all-in-all I'd say we're not overly keen on this recipe. 

Breakfast in Essaouira (Morocco)

Apparently, in Essaouira, they eat pancakes for breakfast.  But not just any pancakes, these are made from a mixture of flour and fine semolina, they contain yeast, and they're served with honey, hard boiled eggs, and cumin. Yes.  Cumin.  Odd right? That's what we thought.  

This house, though, has never been one to turn down a pancake breakfast on a Sunday so we thought we'd give it a go. 

  
Like the American pancakes, the batter for these needs to be made in advance and given time to settle/rise. With the best of intensions, Soph and I were planning on making the batter on Saturday night and leave it in the fridge to rise overnight.  The universe was not there to support us though and we completely forgot to do this. So, instead, we made the batter up at 7am in the morning and sat waiting for two painfully long and hungry hours until we were allowed to cook up the pancakes. 


The process of making the pancakes followed the usual pancake-making routine. First, I started making the pancakes and panicked because they looked weird, didn't colour properly, folded when they were flipped and didn't unfold and didn't appear to cook properly. Then, Soph came to take over and, with her calm demeanor, every pancake after that looked almost perfect.  

My job then consisted of preparing the sides. I faltered at the first hurdle by inexplicably deciding it was smart to pour boiling water directly onto one of the eggs, obviously resulting in one cracked egg in the water to be hardboiled. The others came through unscathed though so I didn't completely fail there. 



The taste is something that is very difficult to describe other than simply using the word odd. The mixture of cumin and honey with the pancakes was a little too weird for both of us, we tried it with a couple but put golden syrup on the rest.  The pancakes themselves tasted great and had a good consistency. No better or worse than our usual pancakes though, so probably not really worth having to stock the kitchen with semolina.   

Chinese Confit Duck with Noodles (San Francisco)

This was a recipe that we were all very very excited to make. The whole family loves duck and Chinese noodles are always a hit. 

The recipe says to use 4 duck legs. This wouldn't ordinarily be a problem but when we went to the shops all we could find were duck breasts. We decided that these would be ok and bought 2. This dish is also a little more complicated because you have to start it 24 hours in advance, by preparing a rub for the duck and leaving it in the fridge to let the flavours infuse. Since I was out the night before, Soph did this part without me, but don't worry, our parents were visiting so my mum was there to keep her company. 

Unfortunately it appears that Soph can't be trusted to take photos while I'm not there so there aren't any pictures of this prep stage. I let her off though since apparently I can't be trusted to follow a recipe if she's not there to check up on me. Now you see why we're doing this as a team.


The next evening, it was time to start the actual cooking.  Allegra says that the duck should be cooked in the oven, sat in what is effectively an oil bath, and then turned half way through cooking.  As you know, Soph and I are not too keen on using vats of oil for things on the hob or in the oven, so we decided to use the deep fat fryer, having established that it can go as low as 140°C, which is the recommended oven temperature for cooking the duck.  

Our wanting to cook it in the deep fat fryer was also prompted by the fact that we usually only cook duck for a very short time on the griddle so that it doesn't dry out. Because of this, we had a hard time believing that cooking it in oil for two hours would work out well and we thought that the deep fat fryer would be easier to keep an eye on. Taking a dish full of oil in and out of the oven would likely end in disaster, especially if I was left unsupervised at any point. 

Now you might be thinking, "but the oil wouldn't be at 140°C just because the oven was", and you might be right, I really have no idea. We veared off recipe here because we only cooked them for about 40 minutes or so, not the two hours it says it will take in the oven.  At this point, we were very happy to have our parents around because they cook duck a lot more often than us and having them on hand meant that we were able to have them check the correct texture of the duck.  For this recipe, it needs to be shredded but the outside is also meant to be very crispy so it was quite tricky to time.  In the end though we think we wound up cooking it perfectly.  It shreaded very well and the crispy edges were perfection. 

This was by far the most confusing part of the recipe as well.  The rest of the dish simply comprises cooking the noodles according to their packet instructions, adding the brocolli, putting in some soy sauce and then tossing in the duck and spring onions. 

For the duck, Allegra suggests separating the skin from the meat and frying this with the spring onion for a little while before adding the rest of the duck. We couldn't do this though because the skin on our duck was so crispy that it broke up when Soph tried to pull it off. We still ate it of course, it was amazing, but we decided it didn't need re-frying. 

Not only was the resulting dish the best Chinese meal we've ever made, it was also one of the simplest. It went down a treat with the whole family and we will definitely make it again.  

One of the most interesting things about this recipe was actually where it came from. Those of you who paid attention to the title of this post will have noticed that it's not from the Chinese section of the book. You just checked it didn't you? Yes, that's right, it's from San Francisco. That little fact surprised my parents as well since, as I said, it tasted very authentic. Well, as authentic as the Chinese we're used to in the UK is at any rate.  Either way, certainly one to repeat. 

Next time we attempt it though, we may well try cooking it in the oven, since it will no doubt have a different texture.  Although using the deep fat fryer did have the added bonus that the oil in our chip pan kept the Chinese flavour so we also made the best spring rolls ever the next day.   

Salad for a Barbecue (Brazil)

I have managed to avoid potato salad for most of my life. I'm not really sure why I have felt the need to do this, I suppose simply because the idea of mayonnaise with cold potato doesn't much appeal to me. So the idea of making this recipe didn't fill me with joy. 

This recipe did peak our interests though because in the recipe book it reads Salad for a barbecue (AKA mayonnaise).  We all love mayonnaise and this recipe teaches you to make it.  

What neither of us realised is just how easy it is to make mayonnaise so when we read the recipe we got very excited to try it. 

To those of you who haven't made it before, it's basically just egg yolks (surprise right? we thought it would have been whites but no!) and oil.  

This specific recipe also adds Dijon mustard - so I suppose it's more of a Dijonnaise- and lemon juice. 

All of the ingredients other than the oil get mixed together in the food mixer and then you start to gradually add the oil until you get a creamy, smooth consistency.  You are supposed to use a blend of extra virgin olive oil and light olive oil but all we had was extra virgin.  Although this did work to make the mayonnaise, it did give it a rather strong oily flavour which we think overpowered the mayonnaise a little.  

For the salad itself, you boil potatoes, carrots and peas together and let them cool before mixing them with some spring onions, parsley and as much of the mayonnaise as you like. At this stage, although it was simple to make, we did worry that we'd chopped the potato too small but really the only thing you need to do is to try and get even sizing.  You then cook them until they're 5 or so minutes off being cooked and then throw the carrots and peas into the water for the last five minutes.  Allegra also says that half the carrots should be sliced and the other half cubed. We didn't fully understand this until we tasted the end result but it added a great crunch to the chunky carrots and they worked perfectly with the other ingredients. 


Since the title does say it's for a barbecue, we decided to serve it with a barbecue.  We made chicken kebabs and mushroom cream sauce and the mix of all three together was superb.  It was such an incredibly simple recipe and you get a jar of mayonnaise out of it - we may have to make our own more often.  We would use the blended oils next time and would fine tune the recipe to our tastes of course but for the cost of two eggs and some oil you get a rather large amount of mayo so I'd say it's definitely worth it.  

Cauliflower & Eggs (Burma)

I know, this title doesn't particularly sell this dish.  That's what we thought too.  The selling point for us was that it's incredibly fast to make and involves very few ingredients.  Cauliflower, eggs, onion and soy sauce.  Simple right? Just a very odd mixture where we were concerned. 

Like I said, it was very simple to make.  

First, you break the cauliflower into flourettes and soak them in water.  This step would have taken me at least 15 minutes, 10 of them probably just figuring out the best way to separate the cauliflower from the leaves. Luckily for me, Soph was doing this part and before I could even finish reading this bit of the recipe, Soph had already done all the work. 

As for soaking the flourettes in water, I've never done this before but I assume the only purpose behind it is so that they absorb water and I imagine that makes them fry better. But I may have just made this up. 

Then you fry up the onions, then add the cauliflower and fry that in soy for a couple of minutes before adding a little water and leaving it to cook with the lid on for a little while. 

When the cauliflower's cooked, you add the eggs and stir until they're cooked. This, obviously, doesn't take very long when you're cooking on a high heat - just long enough to snap one or two pictures before you risk overcooking the egg. 

Et voilà - you have Burmese cauliflower and eggs. 


Because of the soy sauce, we assumed it was a Chinese-style dish and served it with chicken fried rice, which worked superbly. Actually, Allegra recommends serving it with a curry, which Soph thinks would also work well. I, however, have been refusing to eat curries since I was little so I would always prefer it with Chinese flavours. 

There's no doubt it was an odd combination - we'd certainly never had cauliflower cooked this way before - but the result was definitely interesting. It wasn't bad but I also wouldn't say I have been converted to cooking cauliflower this way in the future. It takes a lot to beat cauliflower cheese in this household but it was fun to try a different method of cooking so we may well branch out again in the future.