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April 24, 2012

Home Cooking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale: The Review

Pot. So 90s.

I love the 1990s revival so much more than I loved the actual 1990s. Back then I sat in my room listening to Tori Amos albums over and over, marking passages in Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson about the beauty of true love, and getting frustrated about the episode of My So Called Life where Angela had a meltdown because she had one spot on her otherwise perfect visage. One spot. One tiny, almost beautiful spot. I should have been so lucky to have had only the one spot.

So with all these big 90s names making a comeback – Damien Hirst, Clare Danes, Faye Tozer – it’s nice to be able to actually enjoy them from my now relatively outward-looking maturity, rather than to be letting them pass me by as I sat at home making necklaces out of self-consciously kooky plastic beads I’d bought in Brighton, wailing along to The Cranberries.

And my favourite 90s star to have suddenly popped up is Lorraine Pascale. True, no one had actually heard of her back then – the internet had hardly been invented so how did anyone really know about anything – but she walked in a couple of Versace shows, shot a couple of fashion campaigns, and was probably once ignoring the canapés at the same party as Cindy Crawford, so all  her  press cuttings happily refer to her as a former supermodel and it’s convenient to pretend that that is what she is.

For on TV she’s natural, charming, unpretentious, un-smug about her perfect kitchen, perfect cooking, perfect life. You want to eat her food, be her friend, have her lovely smooth skin (some personal aspects of the 90s really will haunt me forever). She cooks easy food that looks almost as scrummy as her, serving it up at the end of each episode to a couple of pals, a less raucous and more current version of Jamie O.

But I interviewed her once on the phone. It was the day after the airing of the first episode of her second series, the viewing figures were in and she’d had something like 5m of us glued to her brand of easy domesticity. “I just can’t believe that many people are watching me,” she said timidly, overwhelmed by the sudden attention, as if she’d not covered billboards just  a few years ago (which, actually, she might not have done. Who knows?) “I don’t really have friends over for dinner,” she then went on to add, shattering the carefully curated image of her show. But I loved her all the same. Anyone who adds gorgonzola and breadcrumbs to pasta and calls it “Glam Mac and Cheese” is alright in my book.

 And as I knew I’d be cooking for four on the morning after two consecutive nights of larging it (as they said in the 90s), I needed recipes  to be as simple as possible. With her second book entitled Home Cooking Made Easy, I trusted she’d be my saviour.

And she was, disappointingly. I know this blog is much more interesting when the recipes all fuck up like here and here, but Lorraine was as good as her word – this book was, well, home cooking made easy.

The most painful part of the process was when my alarm went off at 7.45am. We had been at Attitude Magazine’s 18th birthday the night before – it had been free booze from 7pm and one of the last things I remember is an unapologetic Harry Derbridge from TOWIE spilling a drink all down my boyfriend’s arm. Totally non-sober myself, Will had to forcibly prevent me from marching up to him to, in my words at the time, “fucking sort him out.” Will really is the yin to my yang.

Anyway, the pork had to go in the oven where it sat for six hours, leaving me time to make the starter, pudding, complain about feeling queasy and generally blame my hangover on my boyfriend, whose only crime was to ask innocently from the sofa if I needed any help.

Lorraine’s Herby Scotch Eggs

The Herby Scotch Eggs were vaguely fiddly, yet not remotely difficult. Hard boiled eggs covered in sausage meat, rolled in breadcrumbs and baked for my American readers (howdy) Luscious Lorraine (as no one is calling her)’s idea was to splat the sausage meat on some cling film (that’s Saran Wrap, y’all), stick the egg in the middle and bunch up the cling film to encase the egg in meat. Much tastier than they sound.

My version. On a hangover, you can’t really expect more

And it almost worked, too – only two of the four split open in the oven, and by the time we ate them, having smelt the pork wafting gently out of the oven for six long hours, it wouldn’t have mattered what they’d looked like.

LP’s Really Slow-Roast Pork With Crispy, Crispy Crackling and Garlic Roast Vegetables

As for the Really Slow-Roast Pork With Crispy, Crispy Crackling and Garlic Roast Vegetables, it was incredible, a piggy triumph, a silk purse out of a sow’s shoulder. “Pip, come and look at this,” Will said seriously from where I’d made him carve. “The meat is literally just falling apart.”

And mine. Phwoar

It tasted as succulent as it looked, and the addition of pears to the roast vegetables were a genius twist on apple sauce. Serving it up with Lorraine’s Red Cabbage with Pears and Garlic (a pair of pears, if you will), the lesbians we’d had over for lunch were suitably impressed. “It tastes like it has been sent from heaven,” said one, as if she knew anything about porking (boom boom). The crackling was as crispy as the double-use of the word in the title implied - so crunchy LP named it twice - and its fennel seed topping was deliciously bittersweet.

Lorraine’s Frozen Raspberry Ripple Parfait ‘Ice Cream’

Finally, after we’d lain in a meat stupor for an hour or so, rubbing our satisfied tummies for long enough to have massaged some room into them, I brought the Frozen Raspberry Ripple Parfait ‘Ice Cream’ from the freezer where it had nestled all day. My last memory of it has been cursing the tediosity (fuck you, you annoying squiggly red line,that should sooooo be a word) of pushing the raspberries through a sieve to make a puree, and the noise of the electric beaters hitting the exact same frequency as the wine-related roar in my brain as they whipped the cream and egg whites, but the drama was all forgotten as we gorged on this vaguely adult take on a childhood classic, as smooth and sweet as Lorraine herself.

My chopping board may not be as aspirational, but not bad, right?

So go on, follow another 90s trend and actually buy this book, as opposed to just googling for the free recipes online because you’ve gone all modern and stuff.  It does exactly what it says on the tin.

Cost of ingredients: £32.34 (not counting items already in store cupboard)

Starter * * * (but it tasted a lot better than it looked)

Main * * * * * (I can eat this every day, yes?)

Pudding * * * * * (Ditto)

Overall: 10/10 Please marry me, Lorraine

Home Cooking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale is published by HarperCollins (£20). Original photography by Myles New

Tags: lorraine pascale pork slow roast roast pear scotch egg raspberry ice cream

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April 09, 2012

Livwise by Olivia Newton-John: The Review

Disclaimer: After writing this up I suddenly spotted the bit about how all the proceeds from this book go to the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne, so you should probably ignore any mean things I say and buy it anyway. The curry recipe alone will more than make your charitable good deed worthwhile. 

Look at me, I’m Gwynnie P…

Every Sunday afternoon, from the age of about nine until 12, I watched Grease. I loved it. Adored it. Even invited my Year Six girlfriend over once to watch it too. I wonder if, as I sang all the words to Summer Loving, she guessed we wouldn’t stay together forever? Of course, I didn’t understand most of the film – that Rizzo got preggo went over my head, that Kenickie’s broken insurance policy was actually a worn-out condom, not an expired certificate from the RAC, was a subtlety I missed.

But one thing I caught was Sandy’s amazing transformation. She taught me there was hope for us all. Like her I was a suburban goodie two shoes, desperate to break out, rebel, act like all the cooler kids. If someone who was mocked so badly by Rizzo, the most laughable “teen” to ever enrol in high school, could become cool, perhaps I could, too. (I eventually bought a leather jacket in Brighton, aged 16. That afternoon I got my friend Gemma to push a blunt silver stud through my left ear, and wore both along the sea front. The strut was pure post-makeover Sandy.)

But Olivia Newton John’s latest metamorphosis is one I’m less thrilled about.  Yes, she’s doing a Gwynnie. “People often ask me what my secret is and want to know how I manage to stay slim, active and healthy at my age,” she trills, as if anyone ever asks her anything other than whether she still has those leather trousers, or if Stockard Channing was a bitch. “Even though my passport says so, it is hard for me to comprehend that I am 62 years young!” Sigh.

The secret, of course, is not eating anything very delicious. Like Gwyneth, she swears by agave syrup, wholegrains, raw food. So far, so celebrity cookbook – and this one comes with the scrotum-clenchingly bad name of Livwise. Still, one of the sub-headings is, naturally, “Let’s Get Physical,” so perhaps it wouldn’t be all bad.

With my boyfriend out of town on a rainy Easter Monday I invited my ex boyfriend (no judgement, babez) and two of my best friends over for lunch. “We’re doing Olivia,” I inform them as they arrive, one by one. “I love Grease!” they each say in reply, as if the poor woman doesn’t have an entire back catalogue of other work to go alongside it. Like, um, that one about that thing… *imdbs furiously*… Xanadu!

Olivia’s Pumpkin and Beetroot Salad with Mustard Dressing (pumpkin = butternut squash, apparently. They’re cray cray Down Under) 

Like Gwyneth, Livvy’s starters are mainly salads, and mainly involve beetroot. The hardest part of her Pumpkin and Beetroot Salad with Mustard Dressing was peeling the butternut squash. “There is something very homey and earthy about root vegetables,” claims the ghost writer pretending to be ONJ at this point (later revealed to actually be two women, both with scarier coifs than when Frenchie’s goes pink).  “This recipe is easy and brings out the best of these vegetable flavours – scrumptious!” And actually, attributed authors Kristine Matheson and Karen Inge APD FSMA FSDA (to give her her full title) are not wrong.

My version. I was lucky enough to get two halves of one of the curiously specific eight cherry tomatoes

I thought the amount of oil used to roast the squash - half a tablespoon - wouldn’t be enough, but it was. I thought that wrapping the beetroots individually in foil would be a faff, but it wasn’t, and they roasted perfectly. The honey and mustard dressing worked perfectly with the toasted walnuts to help everything feel fresh and tangy. “I don’t even like lettuce, but I love the dressing,” claimed one guest, going in for seconds. Conversely, the ex boyfriend left most of his. “I don’t like the dressing,” he admitted, eventually. Considering that, when we went out, the only vegetable he liked was broccoli, this actually shows personal growth.

 

Liv’s Balinese Chicken Curry

“Collaborators” Kristine and Karen didn’t bother with a pithy summation of the Balinese Chicken Curry, but that was probably because they were too busy licking the saucepan. It was incredible. All it took was to whizz up the curry paste ingredients in the blender, then add them to the pan of coconut milk and chicken. Coconutty, zesty, creamy, all the things a good curry should be. “And it must be healthy, or it wouldn’t be in the book,” claimed one guest, and you can’t fault that logic. Liv might admit at the beginning that she’s not a cordon bleu chef or nutritionist, but all the initials after Kaz Inge’s name must mean something.

Lots of sauce, but no complaints. I would drink the stuff, and gladly.

So far, so good. Perhaps I was too quick to judge, I thought, smugly clearing away four empty plates.

Her Cashew, Macademia and Raspberry Tart

And then I got the Cashew, Macademia and Raspberry Tart out the freezer, where it had sat for two hours.

My version. Beware, the impostor cheesecake. Also, v expensive.

It had been a fiddle to make. Nuts don’t like to be blended, I learnt. Blenders are annoying to wash, which I had to do between blitzing each layer. On the way from worktop to freezer I’d dropped it, spilling almost half the middle bit on the floor. “Will!” I’d almost screamed before remembering he was away, blaming my boyfriend being my default setting. I sighed instead, cleaned it up quietly, cursed the Beauty School Dropout in the Sky.

And then here it was, looking like a cheesecake, smelling like a cheesecake, almost with the consistency of a cheesecake. But it tasted like a Jetson’s version of a cheesecake – something that was there to simulate cheesecake but without actually being it. The biscuit base was made with blitzed macademia nuts and dates, the cheesy bit was actually blended cashews, lemon juice, coconut oil and agave syrup (obvs). The raspberry topping was sweetened by dates. It wasn’t bad, as such, it just wasn’t cheesecake. It felt like a con – the nutty flavour unexpectedly where a sweet lightness ought to be. “This is not the one that I want,” I said, at last putting to good use what I’d been hoping to drop in all lunch time. “I’d rather have the real thing. That nobody asked for seconds was telling.

I guess in Ms Newton John’s life, however, there is never any left, for she doesn’t say to store in the freezer. I placed the remains in a pot in the fridge, and left it there for later. With no setting agent, it wasn’t long before it looked like this:

 

Oh Olivia. Perhaps I won’t be Hopelessly Devoted to you after all.   

Cost of ingredients: £42.37 (not including items already in store cupboard) The million bags of nuts for that wretched pudding were bank.

Starter: * * *

Main * * * * * ( I would happily eat it every day for ever, and ever, esp if I still got to look as good as Livia tells the world she does at 62)

Pudding * * (Well, it wasn’t technically dreadful)

Overall 6.5/10 A lot of the ingredients are too pricey to eat every day, a lot of the notes too preachy

Livwise by Olivia Newton John and some other people was out last week, Murdoch Books, £16.99. Original photography by Michele Aboud/Natasha Milne

Tags: olivia newton-john chicken curry coconut salad raspberry healthy

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