New Cookbook - Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Mike was walking through Waterstones in Carlisle when he noted a book called 'Jerusalem' on the table as he passed by. 'Looks interesting,' he thought when he picked it up. Imagine his surprise when he discovered that it was in fact a cookbook and not the travel guide he was expecting. He was even more surprised as he flicked through the pages and decided that he had to buy it. I was even more surprised when he came home with the book and declared that he intended to cook from it.

The book contains recipes both traditional and modern inspired by Jerusalem the home-town of the authors. The book itself is delightful with fabulous pictures and anecdotes. It makes me salivate when I thumb through the pages and I kid myself that the food is all healthy, which I guess it is for the most part. 

Mike decided to cook Roasted Chicken with clementines & arak from Page 179 accompanied by Latkes on page 92. I actually prepared the chicken the night before and it sat overnight in the fridge in it's marinade of orange & lemon juice, Pernod, coarse grain mustard and sugar. I was a bit nervous about the Pernod, which I thought, with the addition of fennel, could make the aniseed flavour of the dish a little over-powering.

The next day Mike put the chicken and it's marinade in the oven to roast and made the Latkes which are mini potato and parsnip rostis. It was a little bit tricky getting everything ready at the same time as the Latkes were a bit fiddly and needed to be cooked to order. However, he did really well and it was an amazing success. The aniseed and citrus flavours of the chicken were very delicate and the crunch of the latkes complimented it perfectly. The sauce was so good I would make it again to dress a steak. 

It looks like we have a new cook on the blog and he is already planning his next meal. As we now have 80 cookbooks on my shelf Mike has declared that to be true to the title of this blog I should now throw one cookbook away .... I think not !!