A good English fry-up...

can rarely be beaten, except maybe by steak. Perhaps I should do an English breakfast with steak too - that would be cool. This was my fry-up this morning, which we had about lunchtime, so I guess I could call it brunch. As you can see, it has a fried egg, crispy sausages and ubercrispy bacon, grilled tomatoes (drizzled with balsamic vinegar for extra sweetness) and mushrooms and onions. I put a bit of cayenne pepper with the mushrooms and onions and a small clove of garlic for some extra kick. My other half had baked beans too, but I'm not a fan of them so I didn't. Neither of us like fried bread either, or black pudding particularly, so for my taste, all the basics were here. Maybe some potato waffles or chips would have been good too - but a bit unnecessary, I think. I had ketchup on the side, of course - how could you have a fry-up without Heinz ketchup? Impossible.

Valentine's Day cosy supper in

Wow, it's been some time since I've blogged. I hate that. Everything else has just taken over a bit recently - I've got a new job, I'm working from home too, whenever I get the time and I guess it's just even harder to find the time to do this. I've not stopped eating and cooking though, so I've taken the photos of food I've eaten over the last ten days (not all of it) from my camera and I'll try and remember what, when and why I was eating...

Here's the first. This was our Valentine's dinner. It was seriously lacking some green - I think we were going to have salad on the side but we didn't quite manage it. I don't buy steak very often, but every time I do I think we should eat it every week. It's just the best taste in the world. I was trying to use a few pans as possible, so I griddled the flat mushrooms, onions and tomatoes, then kept them warm and griddled the steak. Meanwhile, the salad potatoes were simmering, then I lightly mashed them with a drizzle of olive oil and a big clove of garlic (this is fast-becoming my most used potato accompaniment - it's just so quick and easy and goes with everything). It was good. Then we had something else I hardly ever buy - chocolate ice-cream (Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie) - that was great too. I'd get bored of chocolate ice-cream if I had it every day (maybe) but when you don't have it for ages, it's even better than you can imagine. This may not have been the most romantic of meals, but we liked it.

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.

Saturday supper - a not-so-healthy meal

We spent most of this afternoon going through papers and cupboards and tidying as our flat needed a proper blitz. My dad rang in the evening and told me about two curries he's had recently - I was starving and that didn't help matters much. So we nearly got a takeaway to reward ourselves after all the work we'd done. But we had a Vietnamese on Thursday and we try not to have them too often, and reluctantly I cooked a pasta supper.

To save time I used a Sacla tomato and marscarpone sauce, which we had with extra onions, green pepper, courgette, garlic and a few halved cherry tomatoes. At the last minute, when I drained the wholewheat pasta (which I now prefer to white pasta, unless I'm making a cream-based sauce - I think you need something spicy to stand up to the stronger, more fibrous flavour of the wholewheat variety), I added a big load of cubed mozzarella (hence the not-so-healthy meal). I grated parmesan on the top and added a bit of black pepper. I thought it was a bit flavourless, but I've still got a bit of a cold so I hope that's why. It was big and warm though, which was just what we wanted.

Friday food (a) pork and pumpkin seed salad

For lunch on Friday I had this rather unappetising-looking meal - a cold pork salad. I'd defrosted the pork to have on Thursday night, but when I got round to cooking I really felt knackered and couldn't be bothered, and my boyfriend couldn't either, so we got a delicious takeaway from the local Vietnamese (singapore noodles, crispy beef and squid in tamarind sauce). But I'd defrosted the pork, so before I went to bed I cooked it up with some onions and garlic, a touch of sherry vinegar and soy sauce and, after cooling, left it in the fridge for the next day.

So, I had half the pork/onion mixture for lunch on Friday with a pack of Sainsbury's crispy salad, sprinkled with pumpkin seeds and pinenuts, some cherry tomatoes (I have no idea why I arranged them around the plate 70's style) and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil and balsamic vinegar. It was big, quite filling, and tastier than it looks.

Sunday supper of beef and ale casserole

A casserole on a chilly day seems like proper home cooking. I think I've blogged about this one before too - it's a really nice recipe from the Waitrose website, with a bottle of Timothy Taylor's ale and balsamic vinegar. I add mushrooms, sometimes use whole shallots instead of onions and thicken the sauce with some extra flour if I feel like it. Last time I made it I used the gloriously thick Belazu balsamic vinegar (the food of the Gods - it's expensive but worth every penny - it's just sublime drizzled over a tomato salad) and it didn't work as well as before, when I used a cheap one, so I specifically bought a horrible, thin Balsamic vinegar from Sainsbury's purely for cooking purposes. This seemed to give a better result.

I left the casserole doing its stuff in the oven for a good 2 hours, and served it with lightly mashed new potatoes with garlic and olive oil, carrots and broccoli. It was lovely, and we ate less than half of it so there's loads in a pot in the freezer for another day. I was pleased - I'd bought Sainsbury's be good to yourself casserole steak with a little trepidation (I made a spag bol with their BGTY mince once and it was horrible, grisly and flavourless) but it was beautifully tender and tasty.

Veggie pasta supper

On Thursday night we'd had a big tapas meal with my family, and we guzzled a lot of Spanish wine. The tapas included bruschetta with smoked salmon, white anchovies and pimento pepper, asparagus wrapped in proscuttio, marinated garlic cloves, king prawns wrapped in bacon, then in a sliver of courgette, served hot, meatballs in a tomato sauce, omlette and new potatoes lightly mashed with lots of garlic and olive oil. Sadly, I didn't take any photos, and I was far too drunk to blog about it later. But we had lots of the tomato sauce from the meatballs left over and I took this away with us for a quick supper. On Saturday night we had it, with aubergine, red onion, yellow pepper, cherry tomatoes, more garlic and penne pasta. Very filling.

Christmas Eve super-salad supper

Ok, so this isn't our usual Christmas Eve supper, but as we had a big lunch my Dad made one of his warm super-salads in the evening. As it's Christmas, we followed it with cheese, of course. There's barely a meal around Christmas without cheese in this house, execpt maybe breakfast. This warm salad had toulouse sausage and chorizo (cooked with onions, peppers, mushrooms, courgettes and cherry tomatoes) marinated garlics, sundried tomatoes, and probably lots of other things from the fridge and larder. The only thing is, I'm not used to waking up feeling hungry on Christmas morning after our traditional gammon feast the night before... maybe that's why I can't sleep.

Warm chorizo salad, full of my favourite flavours

And this was today's lunch, lovingly constructed by my dad while I made tomato and apple chutney in my parents' kitchen and my boyfriend did some work. He fried chorizo, onions, peppers and a tomato in a non-stick pan and served it warm over mixed dark green leaves and herbs, with delcious extras like marinated garlic cloves, sundried tomatoes and finely sliced cornichons. We had it with brown bread and butter - a flavourful Monday lunch to celebrate my last day off work before Christmas.

Strange pheasant meal

This funny-looking meal was another last-minute concoction. We were about to go away for the weekend and only had carrots and parsnips in the fridge. My boyfriend was walking past Waitrose and went in to buy us some protein for supper - and decided to give us a bit of a treat with these pheasant breasts wrapped with bacon, with a strange, fruity sauce. I boiled and then roughly mashed the carrots and parsnips together and served the pheasant with its odd, sweet fruity sauce with a fried onion mixed with sweetcorn - a bit of a strange meal, but it was really nice to have pheasant for a change and it used up the food we had. Could have done with some greens for colour, I think!