Supplemental #1 | January 2024

A roundup of the recipes you have missed

This is a sample of #Supplemental — one of the regular columns you can expect on Rocket & Squash, A Cook's Digest. I hope you enjoy it. 

#Supplemental will run as a monthly roundup and will (most likely) always be free. However there will also be an additional edition halfway through each month for paid subscribers. Further, a portion of the weekly recipe newsletters will only be available to paid subscribers, and free access to the recipe archive will end in March.

In short: if you would like to receive all weekly newsletters and new recipes, and to continue to view the archive without restriction, then simply upgrade to a paid membership. For this introductory period, that costs just £4.50 a month / £45 a year.

(Small monthly/annual fee —> recipes, words, Oxford commas, and my eternal love.)

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Supplemental #1

Technically, this is issue #195 of Supplemental, having run a similar email newsletter between 2014-2019 — The BC Years, as I like to call them (Before Covid / Before Children, you decide).

But since this is a new platform, let’s make things simple and pretend that it’s 1.0.

Much will remain the same: this is a roundup of recipes published in the weekend supplements and online. The focus is largely UK broadsheet newspapers, although as this newsletter evolves I will endeavour to look beyond those traditional sources.

Typically I’ll organise the recipe highlights according to themes that stand out as I pour through the dishes. Some of the hyperlinked recipes are behind paywalls. That’s just how it is now, although many sites have short trial periods or offer limited views per month. Perhaps my recommendations will prompt you to sign-up? Worst case scenario, there’ll always be tasty things you can click through to. In any event, my hope is this newsletter is interesting and entertaining enough for you to keep reading.

This issue covers recipes published in January. I will post two this month (February), and see how things look from then on.

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Simple and speedy?

Given the time of year, I was expecting a flood of diet-led and vegan-focused recipes. But either my auto-filter was hyper-engaged (there is only so much PR for ZOE that one can take), or things have changed a bit since I last reviewed the recipes in bulk.

A more evident trend was for recipes that are simple and speedy. In all honesty, there’s little point referring you to most of those dishes as you’ve seen them before. Which is fine, I just suspect you have your favoured sources and methods already.

Gems existed, though.

I enjoyed Skye McAlpine’s easy seasonal salads in one of the first Sunday Times Magazines of the year. Assemblies of good things, really: one, a mix of raw carrots, orange, cumin and pistachios; another a sprout, toasted almond, pecorino, parsley and lemon; the third radicchio, fennel, honey, walnut and radishes. No reinventions of the wheel here, but a fresh enough reminder of winning combinations that’ll work through February too.

I know (because I keep getting fed them) that people love Meera Sodha’s Easy Vegan recipes in The Guardian Feast. In particular, friends frequently mention favourites that involve aubergine. I’ve a strong suspicion there’s a new one coming to a dinner party near me soon: sticky peanut aubergine flatbreads. As in, roasted aubergines tossed in a sticky mess of finger-licking things, given a blast in the oven and then shoved onto a mayo-spread flatbread with pickled shallots and some green leaves too. Nice.

Felicity Cloake’s ‘Perfect chicken rendang’ is worth checking out. As she notes, this Indonesian dish is typically made with beef and takes a while to cook (also often then best left overnight), but the chicken alternative is not untraditional, and also much speedier. Felicity’s dissection of the dish is a good read, offered with the guidance of the likes of Mandy Yin, Norman Musa, and Sri Owen, and her eventual method is mighty tempting.

Eating to suit the season

There are hints of Spring everywhere: the cherry plum tree outside my window is beginning to blossom; I’ve see iris (irises?) poking out of the ground already; and yesterday although I forgot my gloves when cycling to do the school pick up, but still had just about enough blood in my fingers to apply the brakes.

While I’m keen for this wet winter to wazz off, I’m not ready to let go of cold weather eating just yet. If we’re on the same page, then at least two of January’s Team Ottolenghi columns in Feast are worth looking into:

This one on winter soups is excellent (hard to look past the sopa de tortilla, but both the wintery veg and gruyere soup and za’atar oil over a sausage meatball soup appeal to me). Also check out the slow cooked dishes published on a different week: again, hard to choose between red pepper braised lamb neck with preserved lemon salsa; baby aubergines with amba and tahini; and braised mixed greens and chickpeas, bound by a bready-almondy-spiced paste and drizzled with yoghurt. You know that’s good.

The FT Weekend Magazine provided a strong selection of recipes through January. In print, it was, as always, a beautifully designed and presented supplement too; Jeremy Lee’s dinner party was particularly fabulous-looking. Online I’m drawn to Honey & Co duo’s fragrant sweet potato dish, in which thick discs of that root are fried in spices and coconut until soft and caramelised, then finished with more savoury condiments (salted almonds and chives). We’re told to serve this combination of bold flavours with brown rice. A necessary balance, and the kind of thing I look for in recipes, because it shows that the writer is interested in your whole experience (and so often the final 10-20% of a dish makes the difference)

For sweet teeth

Much of Diana Henry’s recipes in The Telegraph Magazine were geared towards comfort eating as well. My eyes were drawn to the sticky toffee pudding cake — a date, coffee and dark muscovado powered sponge with a cream-treacle-syrup glaze. I’ll pretend I’ve just spent the day skiing for tucking in ….

Also, partly via The Telegraph, and partly Sue Quinn’s new book Second Helpings (the source of recipe extracts), is this chocolate cookie recipe, which uses spent coffee grounds as a significant part of their ingredient list. I liked her tip for tamping the risen cookie as it is warm to encourage chewiness. I’ll make them soon.

Also sweet and the pick of the entire set of recipes within last month’s Saturday and Sunday Times Magazines was, I think, Nadiya Hussain’s chocolate peanut babka. Into it.

Year of the Dragon

What should you be eating in February? Well, 10 February is Lunar New Year, so that’s a menu theme you could/should diarise. Looking beyond the UK, the Sydney Morning Herald has already begun to proffer ideas.

[Side note, their recipe site is neatly organised. Clear what’s new. Clear what’s from cookbook extracts and an easy way in to favoured chefs and writers as well.]

Your meal could begin with Adam Liaw’s Prosperity Salad. And continue with whole fish fried and then braised in ginger, garlic, spring onions, soy, sugar, shallow water, and then finished with chilli oil.

Substack recipes

Once or twice a year, every year, there’ll be a social media furore or meme storm questioning why it’s necessary to read through someone’s life story before getting to the (basic) recipe. Funny haha.

As always, there is truth on all sides.

Complaints are actually justified because they come from the experience of people Googling a generic recipe, and landing on the most SEO-friendly results. Which are predictably turd, and often use the same blog template.

But because those complainants arrived at a recipe via the ease of a search engine, also means they are unaware / choose to ignore that even the simplest, quickest dishes are best served with a side of context and the seasoning of a trusted voice with which you identify. I’m far more empathetic with those who need quick and unfussy solutions than I was ten years ago (when everything had to be cheffy and perfect). But a recipe is just a collection of words, and the way we interpret them is normally better when they’ve been given a little life.  

All of which is a (knowingly) long winded way to say I’m looking forward to weaving recipes published on Substack into these roundups. A clear benefit of newsletter publishing is that the cook and author has space to go deeper.

One way to do this is through geek dives into ingredients and techniques. Nicola Lamb’s Kitchen Projects is the model example of this style and I very much enjoyed her review of forced rhubarb varietals and cooking methods.  Do check out her custardy rhubarb cookies in the paid section of that newsletter. You should also have a read of Jordan King’s risotto 101 on The Curious Cook, plus Nick Bramham discussing leeks vinaigrette for readers of Vittles Magazine — in in which he expands (considerably) upon the instruction ‘oil leeks then dress them’.

KP+: Jammy Rhubarb Cookies + A Rhubarb Cream Cake

Foundations: 4 - Risotto

Nick Bramham's Leeks Vinaigrette

The other is to provide cultural context. Quite probably my favourite read of the month came via Vittles again, and the food writer/generous soul Melek Erdal. The dish is clearly a belly and heart warming labour of love and the writing reflects that. There’s a life story before you get to the recipe for terbiyeli ekşili köfte çorbası*, but if anything, I wanted to read even more of it.

Civilised Soup, Uncivilised People

*A silky soup, thickened with egg and lemon juice and dotted with marble-sized balls rolled from minced lamb and rice.

Tested

Nigel Slater and I disagree on eggs (paraphrase: ‘Ed, there is no cheque you could write that would get me to eat a boiled egg, please don’t send me your book’).

But I think we’re aligned on most other things: the benefits of eating with the seasons; the satisfaction of a little quince on a Sunday morning; the joy of good things on toast.

Indeed, his ‘prawns on toast’ within the special within the Observer Food Monthly’s January special stood out to me as something to cook. (Pictured at the top of the email; little video teaser for you on instagram, if you’d like to watch it.)

It is deceptively simple. I liked how this is at once simple and focused (just prawns, cream, Parmesan, dill), but yet not basic. 400g of unshelled raw prawns is not, these days, a supermarket pick up; and then, once peeled, the shells are cooked to infuse their aroma and marie rose colour into the cream, before piling onto toast, being sprinkled with more cheese, and then grilled. Lobster Thermidor vibes. Divine.

Did need a squeeze of lemon. Will be making again.

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The Menu

Carrot, orange, cumin and pistachio salad — Skye McAlpine, The Sunday Times

Red pepper braised lamb neck with preserved lemon salsa — Yotam Ottolenghi, The Guardian Feast

Rhubarb and custard choux — Nicola Lamb, Kitchen Projects

See you next time.

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