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!

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.

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.

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.

Feeling the burn again...

20/10/06

It's not been a good week for burns. I was creating a tuna nicoise salad last night (see left) ... I put the organic Charlotte potatoes in to boil, then later on added green beans to the pan. I finely chopped a red onion and sliced a few olives (I only had green rather than black), some cherry tomatoes, added it all to the bowl with some lettuce and a drained tin of tuna in springwater. I made the dressing (crushed garlic, grainy mustard, red wine vinegar, olive oil, a pinch of sugar and seasoning) then I thought I'd better give the spuds and beans a quick stir as the beans as usual had floated off to the sides of the pan. But as I stuck the spoon in to stir, in an unfortuanate mix of circumstances somehow the potatoes bundled on top of each other, splashing boiling/simmering water straight out of the pan and on to my stomach. Owww... Bloody painful. I cried out with an animalistic, shrill yelp. Which even at the time sounded weird. I drained the potatoes and beans, boiled then shelled the eggs and mixed the salad together, all with a great big block of ice held to my belly. I've got the leftovers for lunch today and they'd better be good. I just hope burns don't come in threes...