An update on cooking through Nigella

When I picked this cookbook, I have to confess that I didn't spend a heck of a lot of time looking through it. Truth be told, I opened it to a recipe that had both gorgonzola and pears as an ingredient and decided it was perfect. I had never heard of Nigella. I wanted to expand my culinary horizons because I'm a meat and potatoes girl at heart and I want to be able to play along with Justin in his food adventures.

One thing I didn't realize about this particular book is that the word "Express" in the title means just that - recipes you can put together relatively quickly without a lot of effort. Or as I'm coming to realize, without a lot of actual cooking. And while this has been very convenient to being able to keep up with the challenge, it's not exactly what I had in mind.

On the other hand, after making only a few of the recipes, we have been introduced to many new ingredients and I'm discovering new and curious things in our grocery store. I've not been able to find all of the ingredients but surprisingly more than I anticipate every time I head out with grocery list in hand. I've had to improvise a few times but nothing that alters the recipe beyond recognition. I have modified the ingredients when I can to make them more healthy by using fat free, skim, low-salt versions when available.

So all of that being said, here are the reviews of the recipes we tried this week.


Quick chili. I was very skeptical about this recipe. Very. My regular chili recipe rocks. The ingredients for this one were strange, including a jar of prepared tomato sauce, chunky style. To our surprise, this turned out pretty good. It was very meaty, not too spicy (a requirement if the kids are going to eat it) and it had a nice mix of flavors. However, this is not a recipe that is going to make it into our regular meal rotation simply because it's not as good as my own recipe.

Roly Poly Pudding. This one called for an ingredient called "Golden Syrup" which I had never heard of and was sure I wouldn't be able to find. But there it was in the baking aisle, tucked between the corn syrup and the baker's chocolate. It couldn't be simpler - prepared pie crust, golden syrup, milk and topped with vanilla ice cream. I'm not a sweets person but this was very good. My son loved it and said it was the best desert he ever had. He's still talking about it days later. We don't usually make deserts (I guess I won't be saying that when this year is over!) but if we did, this is one we would make again.

Nutella pancakes. Startling confession: I had never tried nutella before. I knew what it was, I just wasn't that interested. This recipe is awesome. It tastes very much like a chocolate eclair and was very simple to make. Luckily, we have enough nutella and hazlenuts to make it again. Unluckily, this is not a recipe that can be made weight watcher friendly so I can't make it everyday.

Noodle soup. The first flat-out failure. Everything about this recipe was light and delicious except for the cilantro which overwhelmed everything. The recipe has the right bones for a great udon-noodle soup (and had lots of fun, new ingredients for us) but neither Justin nor I could get beyond the cilantro. But if you like the stuff, maybe you would like this.

My analysis after the first three weeks is that the recipes are solid but not very exciting and involve very little actual cooking. I'm going to stick with it because my Type A personality would go into convulsions if I tried to abandon it but next year, I will investigate the cookbook a little more thoroughly. I've made up for it so far by picking some different recipes from various places on the web and throwing them into the mix during the week thereby at least pretending I know how to cook. Stay tuned for next week's installment.