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.

A satisfying pasta bake

This was another veggie meal - not sure why we're having so many of those at the moment. This was nice - we did a sort-of bake with mozzarella on the top and had it with salad. We had some sunblush tomatoes that were a bit old, so we bunged them into the sauce, with onions, lots of garlic and a red pepper, mixed the lot up with cooked brown penne pasta, sprinkled cubes of mozzarella on the top, then grilled it until the mozzarella was bubbling and beginning to brown. Why is it that by just making it look like a bake, it looks like so much more of a meal than just a pasta, veg and sauce?

I've put a photo of it in the dish, where it looks fairy attractive, and another one of it on the plate where it was a bit of a mess. Messy food is often the nicest, anyway. That's my excuse.

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.

Boyfriend's Birthday Beef

This was my boyfriend's chosen meal for his birthday - organic steak with potato waffles and the obligatory tomatoes, mushrooms and salad (not pictured as it was in bowls, but as you can see we needed the green). And one of the best things about this meal was that only 2 pans were used. I love a good dinner with very little washing up. One pan was the roasting tin for the waffles - the other, a griddle. I started off with the steak in a hot griddle to get the chargrilled lines, flipped it over and added the tomatoes. When the steak was still rare I put it to rest in the warm grill (only warm as it was above the hot oven) while I cooked the mushrooms and let the tomatoes stay hot in the corners of the pan. When the mushrooms were done I served it up all with mustard butter. I wish I had the excuse to have expensive steak more often - I love it. Beef is best.

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.

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 First Post of Many...

02/10/06

This was the first post on Our Food Blog.

Today has been a good food day already. Having been to the gym I had to eat my breakfast on the run, and scoffed a marmite sandwich when I got to work. It was surprisingly delicious and is a regular 'breakfast on the run' standby. Opening my emails at work I became ridiculously excited for a Monday morning when I saw an email with the subject heading 'fruit basket'. Yes! It was true! I had won an enormous fruit basket in a raffle on Friday. Sadly I wish I had known about it then so I could have had a fruit feast at the weekend, but hey, raffle winners can't be choosers. I have no idea how I'll get it home. It would certainly defeat the object of winning so much fruit if I spent a tenner on a taxi. I thought I'd check out the canteen lunch with colleagues and was persuaded by a cheeky looking fennel and red onion salad to grab a cartoon. Knowing I had food waiting for me upstairs, I was pretty abstemious - just some of the fennel and red onion, a bit of grated carrot and some tuna in readiness for my main course - creamy mozzarella, a pile of sliced tomatoes and a couple of ryvitas (multigrain, naturally, they're so much nicer than all the others). Wow. What a start to the food week. [Sadly I was too greedy to wait and photograph my food so far, but I plan on recording the existence of the enormous fruit basket before it gets demolished or I drop it on the way home...] I'm delighted to be able to report the photo is now above - isn't it big!!