It's immediately apparent that this is quite a different beast to Tin Can Cook - while still relatively small-format, it's a hardback, with colour photography throughout, showing the influence of Milne's work experience with the Jamie Oliver team, her Fine Art Photography degree and subsequent career working as a writer and stylist on cookbooks and magazines. Various recipes refer to the inspiration she has taken from her travels in Europe and Asia. This is not, you suspect, a book particularly aimed at food bank users or those on very restricted budgets, though Milne does point out in her introduction that "the tin is universal, affordable and accessible. No need for snobbery: the tin is an undervalued resource."
Like Tin Can Cook, it splits up its chapters by type of tinned ingredient - Beans & Pulses, Tomatoes & Vegetables, Fish, Fruit & Sweet Tins - but the tins featured are less likely to raise eyebrows or wrinkle noses than those from Jack Monroe's recipes; there are no tins of spaghetti hoops or cans of SPAM here. That's not to say that there aren't any interesting options on the tinned front though; in the introduction, Milne says she hopes to show the reader "how to create new and exciting dishes from familiar tinned foods and introduce you to some lesser-used tinned friends to be", and I did indeed find plenty that took my interest.
While I haven't yet tried anything from the Beans & Pulses chapter, it provides a good mix of recipes featuring chickpeas, all manner of beans, and a fair few for tinned lentils too, which aren't so commonly seen - the Lentil Linguine with Caraway Cabbage, inspired by a trip to Budapest, took my fancy from these. There are lots of hearty-sounding braises and stews, but also some lighter dishes that would be good as side salads or as part of a mezze-style feast - the Leeks with Flageolet Beans and Blue Cheese particularly appeals. I'd be interested too to try the Chickpea and Onion Bhajis at some point, not least as they come with a warning to be sure to crush all the chickpeas slightly, as they have a tendency to explode when deep-fried otherwise. I love a bit of danger in the kitchen.
The power of a good photograph is quite apparent; I might ordinarily have overlooked a recipe for Lentil, Cheese and Onion Puff Pie, but it looks absolutely delicious in the accompanying picture. I did a bit of a double-take when I misread "Potato and Haricot Hash" as "Potato and Apricot Hash", but I wouldn't be averse to either, particularly if served alongside chorizo, bacon or sausages as suggested (while none of the recipes themselves feature meat, Milne does say in the introduction that she is not vegetarian, but is trying to cut down her meat consumption for environmental and health reasons).
From the Tomatoes & Vegetables chapter I was immediately drawn to the Sweetcorn Cakes with Green Chutney, largely because I had actually made an almost identical herby, coconutty chutney about a week before, and still had some in the fridge to use up. I hadn't had tinned sweetcorn for years - we tended to have frozen corn at home when growing up, but at school it was always the tinned stuff, and the smell and taste of the overly sweet kernels instantly took me back to the school canteen, where, from a deep serving pan of milky-looking water, they would use a slotted spoon to dredge up a great mound of the stuff and pile it alongside your spaghetti bolognese, or whatever was on offer that day.
The corn cake recipe could hardly be simpler - you just mix together a tin of sweetcorn (half of it roughly blitzed or mashed, half left whole), an egg, flour, a chopped onion and some curry powder to give a thick batter, than fry dollops of it few a minutes, flip, repeat, and you're done. Very simple, very tasty, and they go very well with the chutney, which is just coriander, mint, garlic, chilli, lemon juice and desiccated coconut all whizzed up together. A fried egg sprinkled with garam masala alongside wouldn't go amiss, I feel.
Of the tomato recipes I wasn't really convinced by Milne's assertion that her Classic Tomato Soup is "almost as easy to make" as a ready-made tin of soup, but I quite like the sound of both the Turkish Scrambled Eggs, in which just-scrambled eggs are stirred through a tomato sauce spiked with chilli and paprika, and the Indian Eggs with Tomatoes, where a plain omelette is topped with a mildly spiced compote of tomato and coconut. From the other vegetable offerings, a noodle dish with tinned bamboo shoots sounds particularly interesting, as does a vegetarian take on a carbonara with tinned artichoke hearts instead of the usual cured pork.
The one that really grabbed my attention though was the Water Chestnut and Shiitake Donburi, which Milne says is inspired by the yasai katsudon that her neighbours would often be cooking when she was growing up. My knowledge of Japanese cuisine is limited at best, so I had to Google both donburi and yasai katsudon - apparently the former can be any combination of fish, meat, vegetables or other ingredients simmered together and served over rice, while the later is (I think, from what I read) fried breaded vegetables with a katsu-style sauce, again served over rice.
Anyway, I happened to have all the ingredients for this recipe, aside from the tin of water chestnuts, so went out immediately to buy one.
Again, it's a nice simple recipe: onions, shiitake mushrooms, ginger and the water chestnuts are sautéed until starting to turn golden, before adding marsala wine, soy sauce and fish stock - the last of these also from a tin in my case, as I had saved some from when I made the seafood risotto a while back.
You bring this to the boil, then turn down the heat and tip in beaten eggs, stir slightly, cover the pan and simmer for 1 minute, before serving over rice.
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Milne does say that the eggs should remain a bit runny on top; I'm not really sure if mine were runnier than they should be, as unfortunately the photo for this recipe only shows the ingredients being prepped, not the finished dish. It would certainly have been too runny to call an omelette, but maybe that isn't what the dish is supposed to be like. Anyway, there was plenty of rice to soak up the sauce, and it's all very tasty, with the slightly sweet, crunchy water chestnuts providing a nice contrast to the very umami flavour of the mushrooms and soy sauce. The marsala seems an odd choice for a Japanese-inspired dish, but perhaps it is in place of saké or something similar, which fewer people would be likely to have in their cupboards - myself included.
To use up the remaining water chestnuts, I remembered that I also had an out-of-date packet of sweet chestnuts in the cupboard, so I combined the two to make some double-chestnut canapés. I don't really know why; it seemed vaguely amusing at the time. Maybe lockdown was already starting to get to me by then.
I have yet to try any recipes from the Fish chapter, but it was nice to see that this had not just been padded out with endless dull tuna salad recipes; crab features several times, including in a salad with apple and fennel, Vietnamese-style patties, and in a thoran (a delicious-sounding dry curry with coconut from Kerala); smoked mackerel is used in a Sri Lankan-style curry, kedgeree and Mexican tacos; even fairly standard salmon recipes like fishcakes or paté are given a new lease of life by pairing them with sauerkraut and potato latkes respectively. The idea of adding anchovies to a macaroni cheese is one I definitely want to try some time.
In the Fruit & Sweet Tins section, there are again some familiar tinned faces: spiced pears to serve alongside a stack of pancakes, pineapple in a classic upside-down cake, peaches atop a billowing pavlova and condensed milk in a decadent banoffee pie (with Nutella beaten into its whipped cream topping). The more unusual tinned items include figs, in a fool with orange blossom water, and also as a rather grown-up replacement for sticky marshmallows in a Rocky Road; pumpkin puree in a tasty-sounding spiced tea loaf with chocolate chips; and cherries in a very dark, rich chocolate pot.
The one I wanted to try immediately though was the No-Churn Rice Pudding Ice Cream, which seemed an excellent use for the rather unexciting tin of Ambrosia Light Rice Pudding I had in my cupboard (why I ever bought the Light version I can't quite recall now). Inspired by the tastes of her trip to India, Milne infuses warm double cream with cardamom, fennel seeds, peppercorns, a cinnamon stick, slices of fresh ginger, and the optional extra of a teabag too if wished. This is then cooled and whipped into soft peaks (unless, like me, you forget to do this step) and the rice pudding folded in along with a good few tablespoons of condensed milk and a slug of brandy or rum (I went for the latter).
It is the combination of the condensed milk and alcohol that allows for no churning to be required as the mixture is frozen - even if you do forget to whip the cream. I suspect if I had, it would have made for a lighter, airier texture, but it's still very nice as it is, with the spices and tea creating a delicious chai latte flavour.
I had wondered if the grains of rice pudding might freeze into hard little nuggets, like chocolate chips, but in fact they almost seem to disappear into the ice-cream, imparting a subtle backnote of rice and vanilla. All in all, very moreish, and I was quite annoyed with myself for only having made half the quantity the recipe states.
This did however allow me to feed my rice pudding curiosity with the leftovers of the tin - if you bake a portion of tinned rice pud, do you get that much fought-over skin, as with a homemade version?
Yes, you do.
And likewise, if you sprinkle a layer of demerara sugar on top and stick it under a hot grill, do you end up with a hard caramelised layer, to break through with your spoon?
Again, yes you do - a rice prûlée, if you will.
The final few pages of the book provide some "Creative Cupboard Accompaniments" for the main recipes. Most of them don't feature tinned ingredients, such as chapattis and soda bread, though treacle butter could be worth a try. The (tinned) Sweetcorn and Cheese Muffin Loaf sounds excellent too, though I'm not sure what you might have it as an accompaniment to, other than more cheese, or maybe the (tinned) Fig and Red Onion Jam also featured here.
Overall, I would say the book has a wider appeal than Tin Can Cook (excellent though that is), and I can definitely see myself returning to it to try our more of the recipes. Take One Tin is certainly not a one-hit wonder.
Take One Tin by Lola Milne is published by Kyle Books, £14.99.
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