Ottolengh-ing for a birthday dinner

 

It was Brother Toast’s birthday last week and he was coming round for dinner. I decided to make good use of my copy of ‘Jerusalem’ by picking all the dishes for the birthday dinner from it. I’m not going to go into detail about the recipes as they can be found in the book and I’m not sure if my reproduction here would infringe any copyright laws, but I thought it would be helpful to outline how I got on.


I decided that I would cook chicken for the meat eaters, so opted for a relatively easy chicken sofrito (p190) without the potatoes and which I accompanied with the rice and lentil dish 'mejadra' (p120) and the spiced chickpeas and fresh vegetable salad (p56).


All of these were really easy to make. For the chicken dish I used boneless taste the difference chicken thighs (as opposed to a split whole chicken) and sliced onions, which meant I only needed to cook for 45 minutes instead of 90.


I prepared everything in advance as I was off to the Cat's house for a housewarming/christmas party where there was going to be mulled wine.

 

So I started with the chicken, which was seared and topped with all the other ingredients and left aside to cook fresh before serving.

I cooked the lentils and mixed with the oil, rice and spices, ready for topping with the water to also cook afresh.

The chickpeas were simply coated in their spices and set aside for a quick toasting minutes before serving and the rest of the salad ingredients were chopped and placed in the fridge with a jar of the dressing.

 

I put the chicken on to heat through slowly 45 minutes before serving, the rice was cooked 25 minutes before serving and then left to steam as advised for the final 10 minutes before being topped with freshly fried onions.

 

The chick peas were heated in the last few minutes and added the salad ingredients and dressed.

The flavours of the rice and lentils and chickpeas were deliciously fragrant, robust and complex. Apparently all the additions suited the chicken dish very well too. I had served up an onion and coriander raita alongside as which added a further tangy, crunchy and pungent element to the main course.


I had prepared equally with the dessert which was the poached pears in white wine and cardamom (p267). The pears had been waiting in the cooking liquid until 25 minutes before I wanted to serve, when the pan went on to poach.

The most involved part of the meal was really the side of sweet filo cigars (p258) I had chosen to befriend the poached pear. I didn’t have any pistachios, so replaced these with pine nuts in the recipe which worked equally as well. Whilst I say these are involved, the were actually relatively simple to make, but requiring a bit more time a few stages of cooking.

 

 

The dessert was wonderfully fragrant and light from the cardamom pears, but also gooey, rich and sticky from the cigars.

All in all, I made this meal out of ingredients I normally have around the house, all the spices, lentils, rice, chickpeas, pears etc. It all worked wonderfully well together and felt like a special dinner.


Any and all leftovers of the chickpea salad and rice and lentils have made fantastic work lunches. If you are looking for a really excellent present for any foodie, I’d suggest picking up a copy of ‘Jerusalum’. Thanks again to the Cat and Alice who bought me this book. It was lovely seeing you both before the dinner at the Cat's!