Update on the week's eating - Thurs to Sat lunch

I can't believe I haven't blogged for an entire week. It's gone so fast. And I'm finding it difficult to remember everything I've eaten, which is most unusual for me. Lets think:

I had this prawn and noodle stirfry one day last week - I think it was probably Thursday as we'd been out till quite late and wanted some fast food. It was nice - I used a Blue Dragon oyster and spring onion sauce, some big prawns, chopped up veg including carrots, onions, courgettes, peppers and a lone leek, and we shared a block of sharwood's thin noodles and sprinkled it with fresh coriander. It was tasty.

On Friday lunchtime I was starving and wanted some energy food, so I made a pasta with pesto, an onion, a large courgette and cubed mozzarella (the 'light' version from Sainsbury's Be Good to Yourself - which was fine in this). Hmmm, I might have pasta and pesto today, I do fancy that.

For friday supper we had salmon, poached in the microwave in my fish steamer with semi-mashed, garlicky new potatoes, leeks in white sauce and broccoli. Sadly I don't have a photo of this meal - I must have been tired and hungry.

At the weekend my aunt came round for lunch and we gave her chicken fajitas. They were good and I realised how long it had been since I'd had fajitas. When I was a student I used to make myself veggie fajitas regularly for lunch - it was a quick, nutritious meal and tastes so good. Expect to see more tortilla-based platefuls on this blog soon!

Yesterday's food - pub lunch followed by curry - grrrrrreat!!

Mmmm, I'm practically salivating just thinking about yesterday's food. I met some friends at the White Hart for lunch (again) and this time had an open sandwich with roasted veg and goat's cheese. It was on a smallish slice of granary bread, with roasted peppers, onions and courgettes and an enormous slab of charred goat's cheese. The cheese wasn't as delicate as some, and it was a little too much for me, but it was good with the veg and bread. The salad on the side had a tangy mustard dressing which I liked
a lot and there were Salty Dog (if I'm not mistaken) crisps on the side. It was all for £4.95 - a great lunch, as you can see above.

In the evening two friends I hadn't seen for ages came round for supper armed with lots of red wine. At Christmas I had been given a packet of ready-measured spices to make 'prawns in a hot and sweet sauce' (spice packet made by Kitchen Guru) and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to sample it. The spices included were cumin seeds, a mix of ground coriander and cumin, amchoor (dried mango powder), red chilli powder, turmeric and garam masala. I also used some red chillis, lots of garlic, a green pepper, onions, tomato puree and fresh tomatoes, finely chopped. The curry was fairly dry, so I added a couple of tinned tomatoes near the end to give a bit more of a sauce.

I always think a really good curry needs a few accompaniments to ensure lots of flavours, or maybe it's just because I'm greedy, but I decided to cook a variation on brinjal bhaji (with a whole aubergine, onion, a few cherry tomatoes to add some colour, lots of garlic and cumin) to have as a side dish, and served the lot with brown rice (it was overcooked and I do apologise), garlic and coriander mini-naans, yoghurt and an onion salad. We all had seconds (and some of us, thirds) and I shall do my best to make a similar curry again, perhaps without the Kitchen Guru's help this time...

BTW, you can't see any rice in the photo but it was there (it wasn't so overcooked it was inedible or anything), but it was just hidden underneath the rest in the bowl, I promise.

Another prawn stirfry

I seem to have prawn stirfrys a lot, but they're always so nice I don't think it matters. It has to be the quickest hot meal possible. Well, I can't think of any freshly-made meal that might steal that crown at the moment. If you can, let me know.

Anyway, last night I broke a New Year's resolution (the main one in fact). It started off as 'let's not drink in January', an idea we felt was good for our wallets, our sanity and our health. Then a planned evening with friends last Friday meant it morphed into 'let's not drink in the week in January and only once at the weekend'. But last night a friend came over to sort out some stuff on my computer and suggested we meet in the pub first as he was in the mood for celebrating. I put up a big of a struggle, but I confess, not enough. A glass or two of red wine or two later, I realised I'd promised to cook a meal so we could eat by 7.15 and go out. There was nothing for it but to rush home and make a prawn stirfry with whatever was in the fridge.

I used a pack of Sainsbury's crunchy salad, a couple of onions, a red pepper, an aubergine, Sainsbury's king prawns, two blocks of Sharwood's egg noodles and a Blue Dragon Oyster and spring onion sauce. It was ready in ten minutes and easily enough for the three of us - perfect.

Tamarind king prawns

I love this meal. I know it's not very food-sluttish of me, but I'm making a concerted effort to eat more healthily this month after the gluttony of Christmas. And this meal feels and looks healthy.

While I was cooking some brown rice, I marinated a pack of king prawns in a big bowl with lots of freshly grated ginger, 3 cloves of finely chopped garlic, the juice of a lemon (lime's even better), a jar of Bart's tamarind paste (sometimes I just use half but today I thought 'sod it, I'll put it all in'), a pinch of crushed chilies and some black pepper. This meal is good with a mixture of veg, but today I added finely chopped red pepper, carrot and red onion to the bowl. Then I fished the prawns out of the marinade/veg mix. I simmered the veg and most of its marinade in the sauce, adding the prawns to warm through at the end. It's great served on top of some brown rice (for the nutty flavour and texture - white rice would be rubbish) with a wedge of lime.

NYE supper of prawns and Dover sole

Wow, our brains are going to be healthy in 2007 with this amount of seafood. We had an early supper to line our stomachs and allow enough drinking time. The starter was big prawns, simply cooked with garlic and ginger (see them in the pan below), served with a bit of the bread from the day before to mop up the juices and a squeeze of lemon. They were meaty and so, so tasty. Prawns (and scallops) are easily my favourite seafood - not the tiny, flavourless supermarket prawns, but big, fresh prawns like these that pack a bit of a punch.

For mains we had our big Dover sole, grilled with lots of butter and dismembered by me (sorry - I forgot to photograph it before I served the fish on our plates) with lightly mashed new potatoes smothered in garlic and olive oil (I'd chopped the garlic earlier in the evening and left it in the olive oil to flavour it and save time later - I was quite proud of that trick!), simple leeks and I thought I'd add some colour by finishing off the cherry tomatoes with a bit of balsamic vinegar.

We didn't have any pudding - having had a load more to drink and danced around we just forgot, I think, although we had bought some cheese to nibble on later.

Prawns changing colour in the pan

I just love the way they start off such a glorious blue and turn so pink, so quickly. It's like magic and never fails to fascinate me. You can see them just starting to turn pink at their tails. They're in the pan in a bit of olive oil and lots of chopped ginger and garlic.

Friday Sunday Tea - a Tandoori Hut curry special

You'd think I'd be too full to eat a proper supper after my Friday Sunday lunch of roast beef and afters, but no! It was still the Christmas season - any excuse for overindulgence. My boyfriend and I went away to the seaside for a short New Year holiday on Friday afternoon and as there was no internet connection there, I'm having to update all my meals now. We arrived when it was dark and ordered a curry from the excellent curry house there. Here's my plate. I was stuffed and didn't manage to eat much of the garlic naan but manfully finished the rest. On my plate you can see, clockwise from the top, a scarily coloured chicken tikka masala, pilau rice (also scarily coloured in places), king prawn jalfrezi (nice and spicy with lots of green chillis), sag aloo (spinach and potatoes), garlic naan and in the centre brinjal bhaji (fried aubergine) and a bit of the end of the onion salad we'd had with poppadoms. Did you think we didn't have poppadoms with mint sauce and all the trimmings to start? Would a takeaway curry be acceptable without them? Of course not. Oohh, and the garlic naan was great dipped in a bit of cold curry in the morning - a fab breakfast.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sweet and Spicy Sunday

10/10/06

On Sunday I realised the fridge was almost bare. I had to go shopping but I simply couldn't face it. I also knew we had some big cooked prawns that needed eating and some fruit left over from my fruit basket. It was like Ready Steady Cook - what can I make with what I've got? We were starving so I decided to concoct something simple, sweet and spicy - and fast. I sliced a yellow pepper and stir-fried it with slightly old and floppy pak choi and fresh ginger in some chilli-infused olive oil. Meanwhile I chopped up a few rounds of the big pineapple and the end of a pack of cherry tomatoes (I didn't have a lot to work with!). I squeezed the juice of a lime and poured it in to the wok, adding the prawns, pineapple and cherry tomatoes to warm through and a pinch of crushed chillis at the same time. It smelt and looked surprisingly nice, but it needed something else, and I suddenly knew where I was headed - a South Asian-inspired soup. I sloshed in half a can of coconut milk, grated some nutmeg on the top and some black pepper, left it simmering for a couple of minutes and voila! It was ready. It may have been hastily shoved together from a mishmash of fridge and cupboard ingredients, but it was delicious. I knew I should get my camera to record its colourful prettiness, but I'm afraid I couldn't wait to eat it. Yes - my greed won. I am ashamed. Next time, maybe I'll have the willpower to wait...