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Showing posts from March, 2010

FRIDAY NIGHT SUPPER WITH FRIENDS

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It's my very good friend Jacky's birthday and I'm cooking a special supper, while her husband is bringing a pudding. For my birthday last Autumn, Jacky and Nick gave me a huge tome of Italian regional food, so it seemed appropriate to cook something from the book for them. I am a huge fan of food which requires little preparation, allowing me plenty of time to socialise with friends who come to dinner, rather than slaving in the kitchen, getting increasingly hot and bothered, and missing out on any choice gossip. I also love slow-cooked food, which can be put in the oven at tea-time, forgotten about for three hours, and then brought out at dinner time. Osso bucco a la Milanese is a classic Italian dish. My mother used to make it in the 1970s, when she was an expert at cordon bleu/Fanny Craddock style cooking, but when I mentioned it to her the day before I made it, she rattled on about flattened veal, provolone cheese and Parma ham. I pointed out that she was thinking of Sa

CARROT CAKE

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I don't know anyone who doesn't like carrot cake. Even those people who profess to hate carrots or would not dream of eating a vegetable, enjoy it. I think, secretly, we all love the obligatory cream cheese frosting. The following recipe is the Sainted Delia's Low Fat Moist Carrot Cake. There is something faintly toe-curling about the word "moist" (like "flange", "clematis", and "toilet"), but it is an apt description of this cake's springy, mouth-pleasing texture. It's called "low-fat" because the fat content is sunflower oil rather than butter, but of course the cream cheese icing bumps up the calories. But hey, you only have to have a small piece, don't you? I use Nigella's recipe for the cream cheese frosting as it yields more and carrot cake absolutely must have a thick, luscious layer of icing; that is a huge part of its appeal, after all! When I made the cake earlier today, I was puzzled, as I spooned