Beefy pasta supper

I have eaten meals that aren't based on beef this week - honestly. I had stirfried prawns in a tamarind sauce with rice the other night, and a mackeral salad last night (healthy guilt-food after a few glasses of wine - come on, you know you've done that at least once). And I had a panini with mozzarella and roasted peppers for lunch today - lovely and filling.

But tonight we finished the beef. We had brown pasta with a sauce made of mushrooms, red onions, a carrot, garlic, the end of the joint of beef with its juices, a bit of red wine and a Sacla sundried tomato and garlic stir-in sauce - I couldn't be bothered to make my own tonight as we wanted fast, warming food and I was feeling lazy. I added parmesan shavings (after this photo was taken) for a bit of extra oomph.

More roast beef lunch

This joint is lasting forever... we each had another couple of slices from it for our lunch, and it's not even finished yet. This was my enormous meal - I got a salad from the canteen salad bar (mixed leaves, thai noodle salad. tomatoes, a boiled egg because they looked so nice and some grated cheese) and then added the slices of cold roast beef and some more grainy, cider and horseradish mustard. Lovely and filling.

Delectables Fine Foods tomato and beer chutney

We bought this chutney at BBC Good Food Fair. The Fair was dreadful but thankfully the chutney is delicious. It's got very few raisins in it, which is a blessing, and it has a perfect balance of sweet to spice - a lot of both, in fact. It's a good tomato chutney colour (dark, orangey red and unctuous-looking); the texture is slightly sticky in a great way - almost jelly-like (redcurrant rather than Rowntree); the spices give it a wintery flavour (it smells of cumin and allspice) and, reliably, it tastes of spicy beer with a bit of tomato, onions and cider thrown in.

It says on the label 'for cheddar' but I can happily say it's splendid with a range of hard cheeses. (I'm currently nibbling it with some hard, crumbly English sheep's cheese - when I find out what the cheese is called I'll let you know.) It also says 'One of Rick Stein's Food Heroes' - it's a bit tacky having that displayed so prominently on the label, but I'm sure it gets the punters buying it so I can't really blame them.

Sausages for supper

This was supper. Butcher's pork sausages with roasted veg (garlic, onion, courgette, yellow pepper, fennel). Yum.

Lindt Lindor (in a bar)

What a brand! Lindt chocolate has it all - great products, attractive packaging and chocolate-craving-inducing adverts.

I love to use Lindt's dark chocolate for cooking as it has such a high cocoa content yet is still sweet enough to nibble on if I don't use the whole bar. Their extra-creamy milk chocolate is delicious - just think of their gold Easter bunnies with solid ears and their Christmas reindeer, which have just started appearing in the shops again. I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate, but I could happily eat quite a lot of theirs. I remember as a child the delight I felt when our Swiss relatives sent us a perspex box stacked full of tiny rectangular Lindt chocolates with pictures of perfect Swiss mountain scenes, or colourful photos of Bernese mountain dogs with their tongues hanging out. And just think of those glorious television adverts which appear on our screens as Christmas or Easter approaches - you know the ones, a big vat of gleaming melted chocolate is swirled by a man in a comical chef's hat. I'm sure M&S's advertising agency were inspired by this to come up with their beautifully filmed food porn ads.

Anyway, as comfort (or treat yourself) chocolate goes, Lindt Lindor is stunning. It's very sweet, yet each piece melts in your mouth, and it has a gorgeous depth of flavour. The Lindor balls are lovely but very overpriced, so I was delighted when the bar versions appeared in the shops. Look out for them - you won't regret it...

Cold roast beef lunch

Mmmmm. I think as soon as we finish the cold remains of Sunday's joint of beef, I'm going to go and buy and roast another one. I'm not sure my arteries will like that much, but wow, beef is without a doubt my favourite meat. Tender, flavourful, bloody and fleshy looking - there's no way my lunch could pass for a soya-based Linda McCartney 'steak'.

I carved 4 slices from the joint this morning, wrapped two in foil for my boyfriend, and two for me. And we each had a dessert spoon of Suffolk Mud cider and horseradish mustard in a little pot. Then it was up to us to buy the rest of our lunch as we weren't sure if we'd want some sort of a bread roll with our roast beef or a salad later on.

I decided to go to Tesco and I bought (there wasn't a great choice of protein-free salads) a 'You Are What You Eat' mixed salad with seeds & balsamic & olive oil dressing. It was an attractive combination of escarole, wild rocket, lollo rosso, and lots of rather dry shredded beetroot. It had a sachet of mixed seeds (pumpkin, sunflower and linseeds) and a sachet of ok balsmic and olive oil dressing. When I tried to tip it out onto a plate I realised it was huge, so the photo to the left (to follow) only shows about half of it. I was glad the seeds were there as there were a good amount and they really made a difference to the textures and flavour of the meal. The same goes for the mustard - it was lovely with both the cold beef and the salad.

Fairly healthy, nicely filling and delicious - I feel spoilt to have had such a nice lunch.

Sunday Roast Beef

Wow, I'm stuffed. And I think I might pop into our local butcher's on Monday morning to give Tom the Butcher a kiss - the joint of beef (Scotch topside) he sold me yesterday morning was simply incredible. It even looked so perfect when it was cooking that I took a photo of it in the pan (see below).

I dabbed it with a mixture of grainy mustard and butter, roasted it at 220 degrees centigrade for half an hour, then sloshed a glass or so of red wine over it and turned the oven down to 200 for about an hour. I left it to rest for a good twenty minutes while I simmered the carrots and beans and made the red wine gravy. As you can see from the steamy photo on the left, we had roasted salad potatoes (I had lots in the cupboard and when roasted they're lovely and sweet), roasted parsnips and boiled carrots and beans. And we opened a bottle of beaujolais - roast beef just wouldn't be the same without a glass of red wine.

Somehow, everything worked perfectly - the meat was rare and beautifully tender, just how I like it, the potatoes were crispy on the outside and fluffy in the middle and everything else turned out really well. I was really pleased as I haven't cooked a roast for ages and last time I overdid the potatoes (even I admitted they were a little too charred, and I love crunchy roast potato) so I wasn't expecting too much from this one. And I even had a bit of gravy on the meat - as its main ingredient was red wine.

And yes, of course we had seconds. But fortunately I bought such a large joint there's loads left for the rest of the week. Cold roast beef butties - I can't wait!

Viet Garden, 207 Liverpool Road, London N1 1LX

After the cinema some friends rang us to see if we wanted to meet for a drink or two, so we met in a nearby pub. They ordered some chips, which arrived in rubbish-sized portions and after a few more drinks we decided to go for a vietnamese meal at Viet Garden on Liverpool Road.

I love this place. We wanted to get a load of dishes and share, so we got squid in tamarind, sizzling prawns with ginger and spring onion, beef with greens in oyster sauce, chicken in chilli and lemongrass, some singapore noodles and steamed rice. See each dish to the left.

The service was quick and everyone who works there is charming and lovely and full of smiles - and they seemed delighted that I was taking photographs of the food. It was all very tasty - just what we needed - a good mix of flavours, and exactly the right amount to leave all four of us satisfied. See the dishes on the left - mmmmm, lovely. The only thing I wasn't too fond of was the chicken dish - it tasted a bit flabby and low quality to me, but everyone else said they loved it. I've always been a fan of their stirfried beef with greens, and the seafood is great, although it's always deep-fried before being added to a sauce which I think is a bit of a shame. The sauces are always delicious and I assume they add the protein choice to a ready-made sauce to order - if they don't I wonder how their takeaways are almost always ready in just ten minutes.

However they do it, the food tastes great and this place comes highly recommended. With just one bottle of wine shared between us, and including service, it came to just £48. Well worth it.

Cinema popcorn and diet coke

We went to our local Vue cinema to see Pan's Labyryinth this afternoon. It was fantastic (go and see it) but be warned, when you leave the cinema you might feel very tense and a bit screwed up, like someone's stalking the streets out to get you or something. Anyway, in the cinema we shared a large diet coke, and some salted popcorn. We asked for medium but got given large - well, kind of extra large if you ask me, but that's how it came.

BTW - I always have salted, not sweet. Who on earth buys sweet popcorn? I don't think I know anyone who does. Also, why is the bottom third of the popcorn always inedible? At the bottom of the tub it's just the skin of the corn and unburst corns - surely they should fall to the bottom of the big containers? It seems like they allocate a certain amount of inedible popcorn to each person... hmmm.

Salmon fishcakes from The Barnsbury Grocer

This morning we went to visit our local butcher to buy a joint of beef for the weekend - more on that later. Caught in a massive thunderstorm, we ran home to drop the meat off in the fridge. It was incredible, two minutes later the rain had cleared, so we thought we'd go to the Barnsbury Grocer to get some cheese and other bits. We wanted quail's eggs, for a change, but they didn't have any. But we got some interesting looking, oblong white bread, some brie and some hard sheep's cheese, a few feta-stuffed chillis (creamy, with a delayed kick - lovely).

We were going to leave it at that, when we saw some salmon fishcakes in a dish in their fridge. They looked lovely - all fat and filling - so we got two each. When I got round to cooking them (shallow fried in olive oil for about five minutes on each side) I realised one each was easily enough - partly beacuse that's all that would fit in the pan. I simmered some green beans, then drained them in a colander, slipped some cherry tomatoes into the warm pan with a touch of olive oil to warm through, then mixed them with the beans and some wild rocket to made a pretty, warm side-salad. And wow, the fishcakes were fantastic - that sort of fresh, quick, good-quality, ready-made food just can't be beaten.

Late dinner of cold sausages and veg

Last night I went out for a couple of drinks with work people, then met my boyfriend in town. He'd already been home and cooked up some chipolatas (Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Ultimate Pork Chipolatas) which had been defrosting gently in our fridge. He grilled the sausages and stirfried some veg (onions, courgette, mushrooms, a green pepper, garlic) then left my portion in a covered bowl. So I got home about 11.30, a little worse for wear, and had this delicious meal waiting for me. Mmmm, I love cold sausages. I dipped them in some tzatziki and some salsa and added a bit of that to the cold veg for some extra flavour. Great.

Another prawn stirfry

It was about 9.00pm and we'd just got in and were starving. We needed fast, tasty, hot food - and within about 6 minutes we were eating this steaming hot, healthy prawn stirfry. We shared a block of sharwood's fine egg noodles, bubbled in boiling water for 3 minutes, cooked up a sainsbury's stirfry pack with extra broccoli, the end of a yellow pepper and some old and slightly squidgy cherry tomatoes, a pack of wonderful Taste the Difference king prawns, and a sachet of blue dragon chow mein sauce. My boyfriend cooked it all too - just lovely.

Pizza Express, 83-7 Parkway, Camden NW1 7PP

I've just been out in Camden, but as we had an hour or so to kill before the gig we were going to started, my boyfriend and I met at Pizza Express. To review it succinctly, the food was good but the service was terrible, even though the restaurant was almost empty.

I had an American pizza (tomato, mozzarella and pepperoni) with extra chargrilled Italian vegetables. My boyfriend had a Bosco salad (marinated, cooked mushrooms, mini mozzarella balls, spinach, a honey and mustard dressing and dough sticks). I spied a new nibble on their menu, rustic tomatoes, which I thought I'd order to try, but sadly they didn't arrive until after our main course had been served and I'd had a chance to remind the waiter.

The rustic tomatoes had been marinated and oven-baked then left to cool. Served in a little dish with a few cocktail sticks, they were succulent, sweet and actually made rather a nice accompaniment to the pizza and salad, although they would have been equally as good as an appetiser. My pizza was pretty cold, but not cold enough to complain, and it had a good amount of topping as they didn't stint on either the pepperoni or the veg. The waiter had tried to persuade me I'd ordered an American Hot, but fortunately it seems my real pizza was waiting for me as it arrived virtually instantly. I do like Pizza Express pizzas, as (when they're made and cooked well) they have the perfect ratio of topping to base - I can't bear a bare pizza, or one with so much crust your jaws ache just looking at it. The salad across the table from me looked a bit small, so, to put it smugly I was pleased with my choice, which is always satisfying.

I sipped a half bottle of house pinot grigio, which was fine, and my boyfriend drank peroni after peroni, served in an effeminate, tiny, branded glass - very strange. He wanted banoffee pie, which I grudgingly said I'd share. Of course, when it arrived I ate most of it, although it was fairly disappointing - too much tasteless cream, not enough toffee, a thick, cardboard-like base and some old and tired banana. I've made it sound worse than it was, but it tasted more factory than home-made - and it's hardly difficult to make banoffee pie at home, or, I'd imagine, in a Pizza Express kitchen.

We waited so long for the bill and had to ask for it three times, so I wondered whether they wanted us to pay at all. It was £42 for the lot - not bad really considering the booze, but I think the poor service might put me off returning to that particular branch, although the pizza and salad were the usual reliable fare.

The Rosslyn Delicatessen chocolate brownie

I can't believe it's over a week since I last regaled you with the contents of my stomach, and I can't pretend my silence has been caused by a surfeit of partying in the style of 'Lindsay Lohan hits London' or Keith Richards, er... at any time in his endless life. No, I'm sorry to say I simply haven't been eating very much. Last Monday morning I was struck down by some sort of gastric flu virus and, as I was projectile vomiting like some sort of animated Southpark character and laid up in bed with achy limbs and joints, I managed to live for 3 whole days having only eaten a couple of spoonfuls of yoghurt and a slice of toast. Very unlike me. My Dad read my blog and reckoned that Sunday's cuisine of pâté and prawns might have been a recipe for food poisoning, but I'm not convinced.

But, more importantly, I'm now back on my food. And what better way to reconnect my newly returned all-consuming passion for eating and my love for writing about it, than to describe the almost perfect brownie I had the pleasure to share with my boyfriend yesterday afternoon.

I bought it on a beautiful autumn afternoon in Hampstead village, having spent a wonderful couple of hours shushing through the fallen leaves and admiring the beauty that is an English autumn on Hampstead Heath. The only disappointment - that most of North London had realised that Hampstead Heath was the ideal place to go on a Sunday afternoon. Anyway, pressing our cold noses against the window of The Rosslyn Delicatessen I spied a pile of chocolate brownies neatly wrapped in clingfilm. They were a shocking £2 each, but you got a lotta brownie for your money. We bought two, split the first and now I'm nibbling the second and wondering whether I have, already, found the perfect brownie.

It's a bit crumbly on the outside yet dense and moist in the middle, but not gooey like the Kastner and Ovens' offering. The flavour is very chocolatey and rich and not too sweet at all. There is a strange, but rather nice, layer of sugar on the base which is a bit like that clearish icing you sometimes get on iced buns. If that's where the sugar's ended up it's fine by me. It has a smooth texture and no nuts and feels indulgent when you bite in, and it melts in your mouth to nothing quite fast, like sherbert drops. Half a brownie was easily enough so you're not going to feel hard-done-by. But, although yesterday having walked for a couple of hours the brownie tasted like nectar, I think I'm still going to give it just 4.5/5. Although it's flavour is better balanced than Kastner and Ovens - its nearest contender - I miss that moist squidgy texture that persuades you it's straight out of the oven and definitely home-made. This is just a little too smooth. But it is very very good.

Sweet chilli prawn salad

After consuming much more pâté than we had intended - it was just so moreish - we needed something fresh and zesty for our Sunday supper, and we had some big prawns in the fridge which we fancied eating. So I made this quick and easy salad with baby spinach leaves, halved cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced organic carrots, sliced yellow pepper and the prawns scattered artistically, I hoped, over the top. I made a tangy sweet chilli dressing (about 2 teaspoons of Blue Dragon sweet chilli dipping sauce, a couple of dessert spoons of sherry vinegar, about 4 dessert spoons of olive oil and some seasoning), poured it over and got stuck in. Lovely.

Patchwork pâté

Patchwork Handmade Chilli and Lemongrass Chicken Liver pâté. Wow. Rustic yet elegant; rich yet light; traditional yet suffused with a modern, pan-asian twist; I like it a lot. It's even got parsley and mustard seeds sprinkled on the top to make it look pretty. Spread on bread - absolutely delicious.

Oh, and it's got nice-looking ingredients (chicken livers (57%), fresh onions, fat spread - only dodgy bit - fresh garlic, fresh ginger, red chilli (4%), lemongrass (2%), kaffir lime leaves, freshly ground black pepper, sea salt). Find it in a deli/butcher's/farmer's market near you... it's not sold in supermarkets.

The BBC Good Food Show

I'm afraid this might turn into something of a rant. Disappointed that Henrietta Green's Food Lovers' Fair has failed to appear in Covent Garden this year, I thought I'd track it down at its new home at the BBC Good Food Show at Kensington Olympia. I was slightly wary of going as I knew the on-the-door ticket prices were £16.50 (they were about £15 booked in advance online) - extremely pricey for a jumped-up farmers' market, although the website was pushing the presence of celebrity chefs flogging their books and doing a few cookery demonstrations so I suppose that was the draw for the crowds. My boyfriend dutifully accompanied me, and although I'm sure he disliked the place far more than me he didn't complain at all - that was admirable.

Well, at best Olympia lacks soul. And I associate good food and shopping - because, lets face it, these shows/fairs etc aim to get you to part with your cash as much as possible - with a certain foodie atmosphere. But a carpeted aeroplane hanger like Olympia simply cannot provide the pleasure of choosing well-hung meat (haha) in a farm shop knowing it was reared and butchered within a mile or two, or the cosy wonder of finding a delightful chorizo in a little specialist deli, the fun in sourcing the perfect chocolate brownie in an independent bakery, or cheerily bartering with a local market trader for what looks good on the day.

But somehow other places can achieve that atmostphere - and I think I know why. A few of the stalls from last year's Food Lovers' Fair or stalls I've seen at Borough Market in London were present at the Food Lovers' Fair section of Olympia... but it seemed to me that the Northfield Farm burger stall (see left, I had a tiny beef and 'blue-veined cheddar' cheese burger with chutney in a massive bun - it was ok, but not very exciting) loses its charm when crammed under the same roof as an N Power's sales stall (why were they there?) in a carpeted warehouse rather than nestled next to a colourful fruit and veg or bakery display in Borough Market.

And the range of produce at the Show was uninspiring to say the least. One of the things I wanted to buy there was some good quality venison to make a casserole today, but it didn't seem to me that the couple of meat stalls that were there had any interest in offering anything other than beef, goose or turkey as it's approaching christmas, or sausages. Maybe that's what sells at these fairs, but I wanted venison - not easily found in my nearest sainsbury's local - and I couldn't buy it anywhere. There were chutney and relish stalls aplenty, a big section of wine producers - but does Rosemount really need to be at a Good Food Show... surely they get enough sales through the big supermarkets? - ice-cream and Christmas cake stalls, companies selling pots and pans and blenders, some chocolate fondue stalls, and several kitchen designers/oak kitchen furniture sellers. But most stalls were very commercial - everything was pre-packaged (or in the cases of ice-cream or burger bars, designed to be eaten there), the only places selling fresh produce like fish were a couple of oyster stalls, oysters also to be eaten there, and the only veg on offer was marinated in oil in the form of olives, peppers and sundried tomatoes (see photo to the left).

The problem is, places that offer farm produce or traditional delicatessen fare are now everywhere. If you want to buy some 'luxury' food, go to any old market and you'll find it, or even the 'luxury' produce section in your local supermarket - don't pay £16 to get into an airport hanger-style money-making scheme in West London. I thought for the £16 there might be a few people going round handing out some free produce (after the last Food Lovers' Fair I had been given enough pesto, pasta sauces, sugar and coffee to last me a year - and it was free to wander in and check it out) or you might get a free magazine or drink, but no. Some stalls had 'special show offers' but most only knocked about 50p of their usual prices - I didn't see anything that actually seemed good value. And the stalls that did offer free samples were so crowded with people standing around looking gormless, it didn't seem worth fighting through to try a shaving of cheddar or a stale and soggy biscuit with relish. One stall (Tyrell's) told me I couldn't sample the dips they were flogging as if they opened a jar for people to try they all dipped crisps into it and it looks messy and unhygenic - eh?????!

I suppose I should consider that everyone might have turned up to the Good Food Show for the 'celebrity angle', so I should mention my thoughts on that - I stood and watched a couple of the cooking demonstrations and I would have been able to understand them much better if they'd been on the small screen in my living room - admittedly it's live, but the mikes were so badly arranged that half the time I couldn't hear what the chefs were saying, and they were too high up to see what they were doing - you had to watch the screens anyway, and to get to sit on the few rows of seats you had to pay £2.50, even though you could stand behind and watch for free - you'd think they'd include seating for shows in the extortionate entry price.

There were three main problems with the London Good Food Show - it was outrageously expensive, it lacked atmosphere and any sense of excitement and it offered nothing that can't be found in your local market/deli or on the internet. At least now I know, so I won't be going next year.

The Barnsbury Grocer chocolate brownie

I realised I had to try this as soon as I saw it. It's a good, basic freshly made brownie - no nuts, no fancy orange flavourings, not too sweet, just fudgey and glorious. The top is slightly flakey and a lovely deep brown colour, as it should be, and the smooth texture and bitter dark chocolate flavour hint at a classiness not present in the other brownies I've tasted so far. And as it's not particularly sweet I don't have that gooey sick, overindulged feeling afterwards. In fact, I could probably have another one right now without regretting it later, and it doesn't break the bank at £1.50. Very nice, but slightly lacking in excitement - 4/5.

The Barnsbury Grocer

The Barnsbury Grocer, which opened just this week, is causing much excitement at Food Slut Towers. My boyfriend seemed even more ADHD than me when we went in this morning to check it out. I think it might because it's next to his favourite film shop in London - so he can spend hours browsing in there while I spend all our money in the grocer next door.

It's more deli than grocer, with a fridge full of meats and cheeses, another fridge with organic juices and freshly made sandwiches, and shelves stocked with high-quality oils, chutneys, jams, mustards, crisps, biscuits and even (somehow classy looking) flavoured packet popcorn - it's a bit like Borough Market without the burger stalls. We bought a thick slice of somerset cheddar, which on sampling tastes as powerful as the stench of fresh manure piled in a farmyard - and that's a compliment. It's lovely, and shows how supermarket cheddar is an insult to the tastebuds.

I was delighted to see my favourite mustard - Pommery Moutarde de Meaux - which I've only previously been able to find in Waitrose. But while it has the same jar and label, it has a waxed top and the label is written in French, while the Waitrose version has a rubber stopper, the label's in English and it's imported through a company based in Oxfordshire (just something we noticed - I think the French version has a little more rustic charm). Try it if you see it. And the pot's good for storing wooden spoons etc when it's finished.

We also bought a jar of Suffolk Mud cider and horseradish mustard, which has no dodgy artificial ingredients and looks like it might pack a good punch, and some Ear to Ear salt and vinegar flavoured popcorn, made in Belsize Park Gardens, which has Innocent Smoothie style cheesy copy on the back saying you 'just have to smile' when you're eating their popcorn... I'll see if there's any truth in that later. And we bought a pot of mixed olives in lemon parsley and garlic marinade (I think) which looked good, and, of course, I had to try their chocolate brownie... more on that later.

It doesn't seem like it's fully stocked yet - I think they're waiting to see how different sections sell. They have a blackboard with a sign welcoming suggestions from customers and I'm already thinking of recommending my favourite products. It's that sort of shop - lovely and friendly and packed with a Food Slut's favourite things.

Another great breakfast...

A bacon and egg butty. This morning's was cooked to perfection by my boyfriend - we think it's possibly the best thing he's ever cooked me. Toasted wholemeal bread, 3 rashers of unsmoked back bacon, grilled to a crisp, a perfectly fried egg and a swirly squeeze of tomato ketchup in the finished butty. It looked so good I took two photos of it in different stages of its construction. Oohh, with the runny egg about to drip out of the edge of the sandwich... doesn't it look good?

Pork and brocolli stirfry - last night's supper

Fast. Warm. Healthy. Tasty. Satisfying.

Feeling sick again

Ok, that peanut chocolate tart thing made me feel quick sick. When will I ever learn... ?

Chocolate peanut tart

Well, I had to have this to make me feel satisfied after my paltry salad. I was looking for a brownie but our cafe didn't have any, and this was enthusiastically recommended by the cafe staff. I wasn't sure when I saw it was a chocolate peanut tart, as I'm not a huge fan of snickers and chocolate/peanut mixes in general, but actually it's fantastic. It's filled with a rich and smooth ganache, which does taste quite strongly, but not overpoweringly, of peanuts, and it is very chocolatey. The pastry is thin and crisp - perfect really. At £1.19, it's pretty good value and I think I'll look out for it again.

Insalata Tricolore - Zizzi, 73-5 Strand, WC2R 0DE

Well, we've just returned from a bloggers' lunch to welcome a new colleague at Zizzi's on the Strand. There were seven of us in all, and we had 4 pizzas, a calzone, a pasta dish and a salad between us. Mine was the salad - an insalata tricolore. It looked lovely - green and healthy, with cherry tomatoes, slices of avocado and tiny balls of mozzarella nestled in the spinach leaves and a pesto dressing. But I was slightly disappointed with the amount of mozzarella - I think I had six miniture balls - not really a main-course size. The avocado was all perfectly ripe - which was very welcome - but it was slightly flavourless; there were plenty of halved, sweet-tasting cherry tomatoes, but there wasn't anything like enough pesto dressing. All-in-all it was fine and looked pretty, but it wasn't anything to write home about. And by the end of the meal everyone else was stuffed, but I was still feeling a little peckish - that'll teach me not to choose a salad next time...

Oh, also, they got my order wrong and brought me a crayfish and snowpea salad instead of the tricolore, so I had to wait several minutes for my meal while my fellow diners were tucking in. This was unfortunate - we'd all had to wait an inexplicably long time for any drinks or food to arrive. I wasn't too bothered about it, as these things happen, but I thought they could have made a better salad as I'd had to wait so long for it.

Jumbo king prawn stirfry

Tonight we had a prawn stirfry, using Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Jumbo King Prawns (half price at £2.99). They were so nice we had to make a concerted effort to stop nibbling on them before I put them in the pan to heat through - it was one of those 'just one more each' moments, but we finally managed to resist after about six between the two of us.

Sharing the wealth between the supermarkets, I added one block of Sharwood's fine egg noodles (bought through Ocado, from Waitrose) to a pan of simmering water, put a Tesco mushroom stirfry pack into my wok with half a pack of Budgens' baby spinach and once it was cooked, a sachet of Blue Dragon chow mein sauce to warm through. (It's not like I'm proud of shopping at supermarkets so often - I wish other shops near us were open after normal working hours but sadly they're not, and if I want to do any independent/market shopping it has to be done at weekends, and that's not always possible.) So, anyway, back to the food... I drained the noodles, tossed it all together in a pan, tipped it into a couple of bowls and we ate it in front of the telly. Healthy, warming (see the steam rising from the bowl), filling, and taking just ten minutes from fridge to mouth, it's ideal fast food.

Yes, I feel sick.

I finished it a good ten/fifteen minutes ago, and I still feel sick.

Caramel slice

People say sushi is filling, but sadly they're wrong. It's only 3 hours since my 'deluxe' sushi meal and I'm already feeling pretty empty around the belly area. As I'm due to play netball in another 3 hours, I thought I owe it to my body to find something to raise my energy levels quickly. Intending to buy a Honeyrose Organic Brownie, I went downstairs to the cafe, only to find they'd run out. And there was a lonely looking caramel slice sitting just where the brownies usually reside. So it seemed like it was meant to be. It has a very thick, wonderfully sweet caramel layer; I would have liked the chocolate layer to be slightly thicker, as you can't really taste it much, but the shortbread underneath is light and crumbly and, although it doesn't have much flavour, it does its job - chiefly to support the caramel, just as the chocolate does its job topping it. Very sweet, very caramelly, very satisfying, and I imagine I'll feel very sick when I've finished it.

Pret 'deluxe' sushi

For £4.99 (and a stonking £5.85 to eat in) it's a rip-off. The maki rolls are fine, you do get lots of ginger and soy sauce, and and at least the rice sticks together so it's easier for novice chopstick users to eat without spilling it everywhere. But the ginger is very dry and flavourless, and the same goes for the prawn, salmon and tuna nigiri. All-in-all, it's pretty rubbish and I won't be buying it again.

Weekend food

This picture sums up our weekend's food - local, Kentish produce.

We had a delicious venison casserole last night with jacket potatoes and green beans. The venison and potatoes were from my parents' local farmers' market, the tomatoes used in the casserole were from their garden - I doubt the beans or red wine were local though. It was delicious - a lovely November meal - warming, filling, rich-tasting, and with beautifully tender meat. I'm afraid I haven't got a photo of the plate - I was too hungry to find my camera.


For pudding we had a quick version of tiramisu in individual pots. Sadly, again, I gobbled mine up before taking a photo, but it looked delicious, covered in freshly grated chocolate shavings.

And today is Sunday - so it's a big roast lunch for us, upping the red meat stakes in our diet a little further. I should really confess that the meal you see next to this was not actually my meal... I usually avoid gravy (it depends on what it's made of - red wine = good, bisto or boring flour and potato water = bad. Actually, it's mainly because I can't abide soggy potatoes, and if the meat's good and tender enough it's beautiful without gravy, which can often mask rather than enhance the flavour). I put up a photo of one of my family's meals because I know that with gravy it looks like a better meal - even I can see my plate looks like there's something missing.

We had wonderfully succulent roast beef from the village butcher with all the trimmings (crispy roasted potatoes and parsnips with carrots and cabbage), followed by pudding which, if we discount the sugar in the crumble, had virtually no food miles involved in its transport from plant to table.

The same can't be said for the wine, which was once kept on a boat and probably travelled most of the way around the world several times before reaching our table - I won't go into the story of why we were able to drink it, but safe to say we were privileged today to drink one of the best clarets in the world - a Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1970 Bordeaux - probably a rarer find in homes like ours than the pears we had for dessert.

They were from a tree planted against a wall in my mum and dad's garden. They estimate it was planted in about 1890 - the area was once an enormous fruit garden - and despite how the plant has been ignored for the past hundred years or so, it still produces the most amazing fruit. They are actually cooking pears - very unusual these days. We had the pears poached with quinces from a garden down the road (see photo of the fruits looking pretty in a basket at the top of this post) and quince and apple (from down the road too) crumble, with a bit of vanilla ice-cream. See my half-eaten pudding on the left too.

And now, in my usual Sunday afternoon fashion, I think I'm going to go for a nap - weekend naps cannot be beaten, especially after such a filling meal.

Green veg

Ok, so I went to see my Mum. She's suddenly taken an interest in my food blog when she realised the majority of my posts involved unhealthy food. 'But where's the green veg?', she asked, launching into a lecture on the benefits of spinach.

Now, I know I have the occasional pub lunch, which often involves nibbling on a few chips, and I do go out drinking more than I ought to, which often leads to the consumption of crisps/nachos/other fatty foods and a greater chance of eating fried/stodgy foods for lunch the next day, but I don't think my overall diet is particularly unheathly. I eat my five fruit and veg a day with relish, in most cases I prefer brown rice/pasta/bread to the more unhealthy white equivalents, I only drink coffee occasionally, I don't smoke and I exercise regularly - ok, so if I cut out my recent chocolate brownie habit, my love for more butter than toast on a cold morning, the booze and the odd cafe trip at work when my energy levels slump at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I'm sure I'd be healthier (but not happier) , but I don't think I'm doing too badly.

But Mum's nagging made me think about this blog, and I realised I only really write about the indulgent food I eat - the food I treat myself with, or use to cheer myself up. Some of my blogs have been about healthy meals, but there are far more containing tags for chocolate, crisps or cookies than there are for spinach or pui lentils. But I do eat them - and enjoy them. Well, not the lentils as I have a thing against pulses - something to do with the texture... I love spinach though, and other greens. So, I have resolved to try and make my blog reflect all the food I eat, rather than just the comfort food or what I think about at my 3pm slump. It's not like I'm going to blog after every meal to try and prove this - that would make very dull reading and writing - but from this point forward I intend to be more aware of the balance of food I'm posting about, even if it's just to get my Mum off my back...

Mussels served cold

Last night I went to see my parents. I was late arriving there so very sadly I had missed their dinner of mussels (to start) then dover sole, but my saintly mother had kept back a big bowl of mussels for my boyfriend and me to share, and a good chunk of a soft, large, white baguette. People often say to me that you shouldn't eat mussels cold - what on earth are they thinking? It is just a misguided worry about the perils of eating shellfish? Admittedly they're at their best served as soon as they're cooked, in a steaming broth in to which you can dip your bread and soak up the fishy, garlicky juices, but served cold the flavour develop and they are delcious in their own way. We had mussels bought from a seaside fishmonger's that morning (he said they were Shetland mussels - they may not have been local but at least they're British), straight out the shell with thickly buttered (lurpak, of course) bread and a lovely glass of pouilly-fumé. Don't they look nice? Mmmm, it's nice to come home.

Caffé Nero organic 'gluten free' chocolate brownie

Looking at the size of this brownie, having paid £1.40 for it, I'm already a bit pissed off. It doesn't look great. Like the Pret and EAT offerings, it's like a snack-sized brownie, not a real, filling, chocolately treat. It looks old. But I crumbled a corner off it and it surprised me slightly. It doesn't taste how I expected it to - it's quite floury, which is interesting as it proudly displays 'gluten free' no less than twice on the front of the label, and has a texture and flavour as though it is made with ground almonds - although the only reference to nuts on its list of ingredients is the usual disclaimer re. traces of nuts. It's quite dense and not very moist. And you can definitely taste the Madagascan vanilla they mention as the final ingredient on the label. The chocolate chunks (they're bigger than chips) on the top are a bit stale-tasting, as with all these packaged brownies, that's why the Honeyrose brownie does so well - no stale chips. Chocolate chips may look good, but they don't taste great. The problem with this brownie is that it just doesn't appeal - it's just a typical sandwich/coffee chain's boring excuse for a brownie and I think it's outrageous to charge £1.40 for such a dull snack. 1.5/5

Scrambled eggs on toast

Is the best breakfast to warm you up. Creamy, steaming eggs on hot toast (preferably buttered with lurpak and spread with a thin layer of bovril) is also the ultimate comfort food. It's great when you're ill or wake up on a cold November morning and your heating is on the blink, like I did this morning - scrambled eggs on toast was just what I needed. It would have been best with crispy bacon too, but it was difficult enough in my semi-frozen state to do eggs, let alone bacon too. And the flat was so cold I didn't feel it was sensible to let the toast lose any heat as I buttered and bovriled it, so I had it without. It was good though - a hot breakfast on a chilly morning just can't be beaten.

Last night's supper...

Was a triumph for a cook with no time, if I say so myself. I was knackered when I came in, but had to go and play netball, so I put the oven on to just under 200 degrees centigrade, stabbed a skewer through two big baking potatoes, shoved them on the middle shelf of the oven, then went out.

An hour and a half later I came home to a delicious smell wafting through the hall outside my flat (sorry, neighbours if you came in hungry too). I went to the freezer and took out a tub labelled 'Beef and Ale casserole 24/09/06'. Ooohh, nice - please excuse the way I'm bigging up my own domestic goddess prowess, but I'm more used to peering at frozen meals I've cooked weeks before, wondering whether they're meatballs in a tomato sauce, chicken curry or some veg concoction, and worrying how long they've been stuck at the bottom of my freezer, then nuking them in the microwave and hoping I'm cooking the right accompaniments. But anyway, I love having home-cooked meals ready and waiting in the freezer. It took about 12 minutes in the microwave (2 stirs in the middle) for me to be sure it was piping hot throughout, then I left it to stand and shoved some leftover sweetcorn in the microwave too for a couple of minutes. I took the crispy (yet fluffy inside) potatoes out of the oven and, lo and behold, we had a warm, home-cooked, nutritious and tasty meal all ready in 15 minutes. Plus the potato cooking time, of course. Very satisfying.

Pret chocolate brownie

Now, I'm not sure if I've got a bit of a rotten apple here. As you will see from the photo, my Pret brownie (£1.10) definitely got the end of the chocolate chip barrel - it's more like mini chocolate shavings on the top of it. As I broke the corner of it it felt moist and I was pleasantly surprised - I always think of pret brownies as being pretty crumbly and lacking goo. But then the real surprise - I tasted it and I realised why it's different from usual - it's very eggy and undercooked. It also has an overpowering flavour of vanilla, which I could do without. But at least it doesn't taste stale. I'm not sure if this is a true representatative sample as I have had Pret brownies before and I'm pretty sure they weren't like this one, but as I bought it in a Pret I should review it as it is. Disappointing, but for unexpected reasons - 2.5/5.