Well this one was a pleasant surprise!  I thought this would be a soufflé affair, but actually it turned out to be a much more veggiecentric dish which was surprisingly delicious.  This was on the “to test” list because Julia McKenzie is one of the Miss Marples I want to write about in Cooking the Detectives.

A big Agatha Christie fan I spoke to recently was very much Team Hickson on the moving image personification front, but even though I love Joan Hickson AND Julia McKenzie AND Geraldine McEwan AND Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple, I will always be Team Rutherford.

There is much to say about Marple, but for now, I present Julia’s recipe with some cooking notes.

Battenburgbelle came round for dinner and I made half of Julia’s recipe as there was only two of us.  This made for a thin, fritter-esque courgette dish and as I had buttered the cooking tin, it was lovely and crispy on the bottom as well as the top.

I’d been a bit heavy-handed with the pepper, using Bart’s Coarse Ground Black Pepper because it happened to be in my eyeline rather than grinding it via a pepper mill.

I was surprised at how PEPPERY the resulting dish was.  We both liked the pepperiness but it did make me wonder whether the cooking process intensifies this kind of pepper?  I am someone who LOVES black pepper and Mr R is always saying things like, “Do you want any potato with that pepper?” – replacing the word potato with whatever I am endlessly grinding pepper over. I’m going to be using these little pepper bombs much more in future when I want a good pepper hit.

We had this as a main dish with some garlic smashed potatoes and a green salad.  It was really good.  I think this would be a great side dish, as Julia recommended, maybe even with Christmas dinner or as part of a Thanksgiving spread.

Next morning, due to the fact that we hadn’t managed the “moderate drinking” we had planned I woke up with a raging hangover.  This sorted that out! A new kind of bubble and squeak…

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