tThese months are flying by so quickly! Back in March I continued my ‘month of’ projects with cooking. I love cooking but do tend to get stuck in a rut & cook the same things for convenience & speed. I have a shelf full of gorgeous cookbooks & so wanted to utilise these & get some new firm favourites in. 

We started as a family effort, our newest cookbook & a recipe I was most keen to try. From the Meringue Girls Cookbook we made their signature Meringue Kisses. The girls were super excited, we painted the insides of our piping bags pink & purple & piped around mini marshmallows! They were AMAZING! 

As our first cooking afternoon went so well I also tried Carluccio’s Classic Carbonara Recipe I don’t own a Carluccio cookbook so followed his recipe on youtube which you can view in my previous post. I was unsure about ‘uncooked eggs’ in the recipe or rather just letting the heat of the pasta cook the eggs through whilst still being moist... anyway we followed it to the exact detail & it was delicious & got a two thumbs up from the girls! hurrah! 

Our next cookbook meal was from Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals & my mum was over for dinner so I needed to impress! We chose the Fish Bake & oh my goodness the flavours were banging. Everyone enjoyed the salmon, the prawns, the anchovies & pancetta. MMMM mm I definitely need to make this again! 

I didn’t cook out of cookbooks every night as our routines would make this whole experience an anxiety attack... we did one or two a week & maybe more if we were feeling adventurous enough. Our next meal was a vegetarien curry FEAST! From Atul Kochhar’s 30 Minute Curries. We chose a mushroom & a lentil curry & made a raita so we could have wraps & rice. ‘BEST CURRY EVER’ the girls sang! Hooray! 

Introducing a new food altogether meant I had to get the girls on board to help cook. I have never cooked couscous before! (what the hell???) anyway, getting the girls to help means they are more likely to try it & eat it & love it. Hurrah! We made Moroccan Chicken Couscous from the Leon Recipe & Ingredients cookbook. We have another hit! Yay!

By this point the girls were fully invested in our month of cooking. So much that Ada wanted to make her own jam sandwich - no cookbooks used for this. haha.

So things were going really well, the confidence was growing, so we decided to embark on some gorgeous looking Peach & Raspberry Bundt Cakes from Ottolenghi’s The Cookbook. Only I don’t know what happened, whether I was too tired, or the girls were too excited but it was havoc. Flour everywhere, eggs being dropped Ada putting her fingers in the bowl - sometimes with the whisk, mum not being listened to. arghhhh. We got to the baking stage & then I waited for the anxiety levels to lesson before icing them myself the following day- eek! hahaha. The end result was exquisite! Mmmmmm

Another recipe from Leon Recipe & Ingredients was this Spicy Coconut Fish. Oh my god this was amazing. I want this right now actually. This was a winner.

A couple of weeks before Easter my extended family got together & had a pot luck dinner which is always fun! I made another Ottolenghi recipe which I found on his website here. It was HUGE!  But yummy & luckily I had leftovers for the following day Hooray! 

My brother was away for our easter celebrations so we decided to instead catch up & have a Mexican Feast from a cookbook I purchased during this month of cooking. Thomasina Miers’, brains of Wahaca’s book Mexican Cooking At Home. I made Crispy Prawn Taquitos with spicy avocado salsa, avocado salad & pork belly carnitas, oh & pink pickled onions. This took quite a bit of work as I made quite a few new things. The vibrant colours, the freshness & the spice of these recipes were spot on. Firm favourites of our month of cooking. Just wow.

I had one weekend left of this month of cooking & decided to finally try a recipe from Gizzi Erskine’s Kitchen Magic. Lamb, aubergine & artichoke bolognase. You see, the husband is a bit of a pro at the bolognase in our house so I thought I’d mix it up a bit with a lamb version. It was so smooth & warming & tasty. Another double thumbs up from us! Hooray! 

And that was my month of cooking! It was so much fun & we tried so many different recipes rather than just daydreaming over them in my cookbooks! Im defintely going to be doing this more often now & making it a family treat!