What were we reading and cooking?
My initial post in the linky was a Lemon Souffle as mentioned in the poignant novel Silent Hours by Cesca Major. I was quite worried it would be a total flop, as souffles are well known for been temperamental, but it turned out to be pretty good. At least, my main critic aka dear husband approved.
Cheryl from Madhouse Family Reviews is a prolific book reader, and her culinary posts are often prompted by books. She is the most enthusiastic supporter of #ReadCookEat challenge, and always finds exciting dishes.
Patricia Scanlan's A Time for Friends has inspired her to cook not one but two tasty meals.
The first one was a Biscuit cake. I remember reading that Prince William is a big fan of a good old biscuit cake, and that he and Kate had a biscuit cake at their reception. Not sure if that's true or an urban myth.
Cheryl's mini-chef Pierre was in charge. The cake was made with chocolate digestive biscuits, butter, dried sour cherries, golden syrup, Smarties, white chocolate and was there something else I forgot to mention?! It's a fun recipe, perfect for kids, when you let them rule the kitchen. I bet my guys would approve of this cake, though knowing them, they'd put Jelly beans and jelly babies on top rather than Smarties.
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| Biscuit cake/ Image credits - Madhouse Family Reviews |
The second recipe from the same novel was another quick and easy meal. Filled croissants might not win a Masterchef for the complexity of the recipe (and why not?!) but they make a tasty and speedy lunch when you cannot be too fussed about anything taking too much time or effort. Imagine a hot croissant filled with bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and cheese, wrapped in foil and baked in the oven, and I'd be definitely happy to join in. Save one for me!
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| Hot stuffed savoury croissant/ Image credits: Madhouse Family Reviews |
Alison from Dragons and Fairy Dust cooked a delicious Moroccan Chicken as mentioned in The Island Escape by Kerry Fisher. It is bursting with warm spices and fruit flavours. You can find chickpeas and apricots there as well as a lot of warming flavourful spices. It was prepared in the slow cooker, and was much appreciated by Alison's men.
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| Moroccan chicken, image credits: Dragons and Fairy Dust |
As it happened, we have another Moroccan chicken dish in the linky, this time by Cheryl from Madhouse Family Reviews. She read Hippy Dinners and cooked this tasty family meal. It has apricots and almonds, as well as lots of delicious spices. Cheryl loves travelling in cuisines, and I cannot recommend her Globe-cooking folder highly enough.
The two recipes are similar yet different, and both get thumbs up from me. I love the combination of chicken, dried fruit, nuts and spices.
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| Moroccan chicken/ image credits - Madhouse Family Reviews |
Cheryl has added another tasty meat dish to the linky - Breaded pork with mushroom gravy, which is described in School of Good and Evil 2 by Soman Chainani. There are so many wonderful flavours in this recipe - mushrooms, parmesan, dried herbs.
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| Breaded pork with mushroom gravy/ image credits - Madhouse Family reviews |
From meat dishes back to cakes:
Alison from Dragons and Fairy Dust baked a wonderful boiled cake. She found the description of the cake in Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes. This was an experiment, and Alison did actually boil the dried fruit first, which made the end result very moist and succulent. I'm very tempted to try this idea. The cake looks very pretty, and is one of the traditional fruit cakes that you can imagine being served in old-fashioned tearooms.
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| Boiled cake/ Image credits - Dragons and Fairy Dust |
While Cheryl went for the Moroccan chicken, I baked a lemon drizzle cake which appears in Hippy Dinners, as a "normal" dessert cooked by a "normal" Grandma in the novel (normal as opposed to hippy, and is meant as ironic). It was a big success with my family. I really should bake it again soon, as they keep asking when I'm going to make it.
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| lemon drizzle cake |
Have you read a book recently which inspired you to run to the kitchen and cook to your heart's content?
I hope you are inspired by books to join in our #ReadCookEat challenge.
The idea is to choose a book, either a world classic or modern fiction, or even memoirs and pick up a dish mentioned or described in that book and then recreate it in a recipe. Please say a few lines about your chosen book, and maybe even do a quote from the book.
If you decide to take part, please add the badge to your post and link up back to me, and either use a link-up tool or add the url of your post as a comment. Alternatively, email me with the link to your post (my email is sasha1703 at yahoo dot com).
I promise to Pin all blogs posts taking part in this challenge, as well as RT and Google+
The idea is to choose a book, either a world classic or modern fiction, or even memoirs and pick up a dish mentioned or described in that book and then recreate it in a recipe. Please say a few lines about your chosen book, and maybe even do a quote from the book.
If you decide to take part, please add the badge to your post and link up back to me, and either use a link-up tool or add the url of your post as a comment. Alternatively, email me with the link to your post (my email is sasha1703 at yahoo dot com).
I promise to Pin all blogs posts taking part in this challenge, as well as RT and Google+
I always love the eclectic mix of recipes on #readcookeat, from very traditional to exotic. I have loads more bookmarked and should hopefully be making one or two this week :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Cheryl! Eclectic is the right word to describe this collection, but then it's more fun like that, isn't it?
DeleteLovely selection of recipes. Its so fun to cook from novels. Sadly my recent reads have been devoid of food (what sort of novels are they!) but hope to find some soon
ReplyDelete