Comfort and Spice

The second cook book I have been given to play with this week is called Comfort and Spice, and is by a food blogger called Niamh Shields, who writes the blog Eat Like a Girl.  It is by the always interesting publisher Quadrille, and forms part of their ‘New Voices in Food’ collection.

The book itself is a thing of beauty. It is smaller than the average cookery book, and lighter. You could actually put it in a regular book shelf space, and not break your wrists carting it around.  The photography is beautiful and the idea of commissioning a series of up and coming writers or less well known writers is a good one.

The only thing I have found frustrating with the book so far is that the layout is far from intuitive.  The sections are hard to distinguish from each other, and the recipes are fairly eclectic, so it’s hard to work out where they fit.  It’s best if you have time to browse through it, just going oooh and aaaah.  So far I’ve made a short list of about ten things I MUST try and there are about twenty or thirty other things that I’d like to get around to.

So far though, we have only tested one recipe.  Tilly made Halloumi and Pomegranate salad for me last night.

Usually Tilly does not do savoury.  She is interested in bread, and baking, and very good she is at it too.  She is less enamoured of savoury food, and therefore has much less interest in cooking it.  I have been hoping that she would find a way into engaging with it, and I think with this recipe we may have cracked it.

She loves halloumi cheese, and she loves pomegranates. She was desperately hungry for a simple supper type snack, and couldn’t find anything she wanted to eat.  I pointed her at this.

She took to it like a duck to water, and apart from mashing her halloumi so that it resembled scrambled eggs, she did a damn fine job.

She liked it, although she didn’t love it, but I am happy with liking it.

I loved it. I loved it so much I ate a huge plate of it yesterday, and finished the rest for lunch today.

I have been browsing through the book as I was making my shopping order up today and have many things I am desperate to try, so I will keep you apprised of our progress as we go.I think the next two things I am making though are the chocolate and chilli truffles and the lime and passion fruit curd.

It’s a good job I am at peace with not having a career as a model because this waist line aint getting any thinner.

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