Nigella Bites Read Online Free PDF Page B

itself.
    Bake the cakes for 50–55 minutes, or until a cake-tester comes out clean. Cool the cakes in their tins on a wire rack for 15 minutes, and then turn the cakes out onto the rack to cool completely.
    To make the icing, melt the chocolate in the microwave – 2–3 minutes on medium should do it – or in a bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water, and let cool slightly.
    In another bowl beat the butter until it’s soft and creamy (again, I use the KitchenAid here) and then add the sieved icing sugar and beat again until everything’s light and fluffy. I know sieving is a pain, the one job in the kitchen I really hate, but you have to do it or the icing will be unsoothingly lumpy. Then gently add the vanilla and chocolate and mix together until everything is glossy and smooth.
    Sandwich the middle of the cake with about a quarter of the icing, and then ice the top and sides too, spreading and smoothing with a rubber spatula.

CHAPTER THREE
TV DINNERS
    Even if you like cooking, at the end of a long day you don’t necessarily have much time or energy for it. Of course you can always phone for a pizza, but I find that a bit of stoveside pottering helps me unwind. What I’m talking about here is the food you can cook on those days when you just have to hit the kitchen running…
    Mozzarella in Carrozza
    Chicken with Chorizo and Cannellini
    Linguine with Garlic Oil and Pancetta
    Salt and Pepper Squid
    Thai Yellow Pumpkin and Seafood Curry
    Bitter Orange Ice Cream
    MOZZARELLA IN CARROZZA
    This is Italian food before Tuscan rustic chic. The ‘in carrozza’ bit means ‘in a carriage’ and doesn’t really explain what this golden-crusted fried mozzarella sandwich is about, just gives an indication that the milky cheese is somehow contained. What you should know if you’ve never tried it (apart from the fact that it is one of the easiest, most gratifying laptop dinners imaginable) is that it is somewhere between eggy bread, cheese on toast and fried slice. For children (and do bear this in mind for a quick, hot filler when they get back from school) it is desirably like pizza sandwich, and could be made more so with tomato sauce smeared within the bread’s tender interior.
    It works, as well, served with a tomato or, for adults, chilli sauce alongside, into which you can dip the corners of the oozing sandwich as you eat. And, unorthodox though this is, I love it with a fierce sprinkling of chopped fresh red chilli in with, and to counter, the gorgeously melting blandness of the mozzarella.
    I can’t pretend this version is absolutely authentic: it wasn’t invented using plastic white bread. But white sliced is just fine, and, frankly, what I use. For one thing, if you have children it’s what you tend to have in the house. Just be sure to use the lightest hand when dunking it in the milk; more than a moment and the bread will have dissolved into unredeemable mushiness. But don’t be cautious about this: it’s quick and easy to make, and requires very little in the way of shopping. Speaking of which, it is not worth buying the better, and more expensive, buffalo mozzarella here. The milky dampness of that cheese is not required; it is anyway too liquid and, besides, ordinary cow’s-milk mozzarella produces just the right fleshy goo, oozing out of the cut sandwich into stringy, chewy ribbons.
    Serves 2.
    6 slices white bread, crusts removed
    1 ball mozzarella, cut into approx. half-centimetre slices, then strips
    125ml full-fat milk
    3 heaped tablespoons plain (or better still Italian 00) flour
    1 egg
    salt and pepper
    olive oil (not extra-virgin) for frying
    Make sandwiches out of the bread and mozzarella, leaving a little margin around the edges unfilled with cheese, and press the edges together with your fingers to help seal. (One of the advantages of plastic bread is that it is easily wodged together.) Pour the milk into one soup bowl, the flour into another, and beat the egg with salt and pepper in another.