Another new cook book – by the fabulous Claudia Rosen!

On January 22, 2015 by battenburgbelle

Grandma and Grandpa Battenburg bought me Claudia Rosen’s The Food of Italy for my birthday (a lovely signed copy). It’s a very attractive book, with lots of information about the regional food of Italy. Missy B feels a pressing need to grow a little taller, so I am presenting her with lots of protein. I started on the book with these very plain lamb cutlets (I’m not sure I actually needed a recipe for this) – Claudia says that if I was from Lazio I would just brush them with olive oil, season and griddle or fry for a couple of minutes each side. That’s  it. And they were lovely. Missy B ate three, which meant I only got one. But I have given up on any idea of growing upwards any more, so that was OK. I served them with some potatoes en papillote, about which I have waxed lyrical here before, and the first cauliflower cheese of the year.

Lamb chops from Lazio

Lamb chops from Lazio

Another one that sounded very promising, but left the Battenburg family slightly disappointed, was Claudia’s chicken with olives (from Liguria, in case you are interested). After browning the chicken legs all over, you add garlic cloves, oregano, rosemary, sugar, salt, pepper and white wine. After 15 minutes you add tomatoes, green olives and toasted pine nuts. I used marjoram, in the absence of oregano, but I think it’s unlikely that that tweak was what let the dish down. It was fine, but not actually awesome – you can’t win them all. We all prefer the one I mentioned in my half-baked chicken blog a while ago.

Chicken with olives and pine nuts

Chicken with olives and pine nuts

Angus & Clive came for dinner on a working day when cooking a whole meal was a challenge, so we had a Thai takeaway from Benjawan just down the road. Very good indeed – I usually have the same dish there, which seems to be a permanent fixture on the Specials menu – prawns and aubergines. Delicious. I thought I should at least make a dessert, so I defrosted some pastry the evening before and made a lemon meringue pie, more or less following Felicity Cloake’s “How to make a perfect…” recipe.

Lemon meringue pie

Lemon meringue pie

I have a tip for making meringue: don’t do it while making a tomato and mozzarella salad, cooking some pasta, tidying up and chatting. The first batch was a disaster – too runny. We had a debate about whether a) to just use and see what happened or b) to accept that it was rubbish and start afresh. I’m glad we went for plan b – it was pretty much perfect and the pie was rather wonderful. I meant to send the left overs to work with Mr B, but totally forgot. So today is definitely not going to be one of my 5:2 days…

One Response to “Another new cook book – by the fabulous Claudia Rosen!”

Leave a Reply to Sally Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *