Pizza
Seems like we’ve been all about the pizza and pasta lately. If either of us had a personal trainer, I’m sure that he/she would be shouting at us right now. Anyway, that’s not the case so here we go… 
When we’ve made pizza dough before, we’ve made it with what is supposedly the Pizza Express recipe. This time we decided to try another recipe as that one requires lots of waiting for it to rise, then kneading more, then rising again, etc. We found a Jamie recipe and decided to give it a go.
Jamie is great on television with his rustic bish-bash-bosh, but trying to emulate his apparently easy-going hands-on approach in your own kitchen without the aid of numerous retakes and staff to clean up after you, is of course another story. This is a case in point:
The recipe said to mix your yeast with some sugar in a bowl with some lukewarm water and leave it to stand for a while. Easy enough. Then it says to pile up your flour on a clean work surface, make a well in the middle and pour in the liquid. Okay, a little precarious but we’re still managing. Next he says to start mixing the flour into the liquid with a fork, slowly, starting from the inside. Sounds easy enough, and for a few seconds it went well. But then the liquid started to breach the wall of flour and run out onto the work surface. Trying to plug that breach just caused another, and soon we had yeasty water all over the work surface, down the fronts of the cupboards and on the floor. Great, thanks Jamie. Next time we’ll use a bowl and dough hook.
Anyway, once we’d managed to salvage what we could of the dough, knead it for ten minutes and leave it for another 15 to rise, we topped it with some garlic, basil and cherry tomato sauce that we’d made, along with parma ham, sundried tomatoes, some lovely marinated olives and of course mozarella. Quick bake in the oven on our pizza stone, then topped it with rocket and it was ready!
Lasagne
As I mentioned earlier in the week, I often crave spaghetti bolognaise; lasagne is another thing that regularly finds it’s way into my subconscious and shouts “eat me, eat me”…not that unusual I suppose given that it’s essentially the same as bolognaise, just slightly differently arranged.
I use the same recipe for bolognaise as I do for the meat sauce that goes into lasagne. I don’t think that’s traditional but I like it so that’s all that really matters.
Fred is out tonight so when I started to think about dinner I quickly went from Marmite toast, to spaghetti bolognaise to lasagne. I knew I had some leftover sauce in the freezer and as we’re trying desperately to clear some of the food in there it seemed a sensible choice. It does require a fair amount of effort despite the fact the sauce was already made but once the craving takes hold there’s really no escape.
I made a quick all-in-one bechamel sauce and used that to layer up a mixture of plain and spinach lasagne sheets, topped with Parmesan cheese (and a little cheddar) and baked it in the oven for 25 minutes.
I also made some garlic bread to go with it and a small salad to atone for the double carbs.
I’m glad the craving won out, it was so much satisfying than Marmite toast.
Smoked Salmon Fishcakes and Salad
This evening we had some fish cakes that we’d made previously and frozen. They were very good - the fish was hot-smoked salmon and the potatoes had been baked in the oven. The smoked salmon gave the fish cakes a wonderful flavour; sometimes poached fish gets lots amongst the potatoes.
Spaghetti Bolognaise
Not a particularly interesting dish, nor a particularly interesting photograph but I’d been craving this for a few days so today I spent the afternoon making the sauce. We saw this a lot on menus while we were away, particularly children’s menus, so I guess that’s where the craving came from.
Initially it didn’t turn out very well, despite simmering the sauce for over an hour it was thin and the flavours hadn’t combined well. It was also too salty. I fixed this by adding an extra small tin of tomatoes and some more water and boiling it for a while and then simmering it for another two hours. It turned out well in the end and satisfied my craving.
Lamb Chops and Sauteed Potatoes
A quick and easy meal this evening using up some lamb chops from the (vastly over-filled) freezer. The lamb chops were really good but the potatoes slightly disappointing, we used the leftovers from Friday’s roast chicken which made great roast potatoes but were sadly too floury for sauteed potatoes. More vegetables as we’re still trying to counteract the amount of meat we ate last week.
Chicken Salad
Having been on holiday in Spain last week, we mostly ate meat. Then yesterday we drove up to Suffolk where I was playing cricket and I ended up eating sausages for three meals in a row - sausage and mash for lunch, barbecued sausages in the evening and then another sausage as part of an excellent B&B breakfast. So we were in the mood for something light for lunch today and made some salad. We had some cold chicken left over from Friday’s dinner, so added that too. Drizzled with some lovely olive oil and it was just what we needed.
Spain
As we’ve already mentioned, Fred and I have just come back from a week in Spain. We went to Mijas in the south of Spain and were lucky enough to be surrounded by a number of very good restaurants (which we largely found via this brilliant and very useful website).
We didn’t take our camera out with us most evenings so had to rely on my camera phone, sadly not all the pictures came out very well but here’s what we have.
On our first evening, we went to El Mirlo Blanco, which was a lovely traditional Spanish restaurant in the centre of the village of Mijas. We had seen it on our first visit to the village and had decided that it looked like just what we needed. It was a lovely evening (all of them were) and we would have liked to sit outside on the terrace, but sadly it was full and we had to sit inside. The menu was very traditional and specialised in dishes from the Basque region. For starters we ordered jamon (very good!) and “prawns with garlic” which were excellent - lovely, tasty, non-rubbery prawns in very garlicky butter. For mains we had spider crab (txangurro) which came in its shell, flaked and mixed with cream and cheese, and also salt cod cooked Basque style (with tomato, red pepper and garlic).
The next evening we visited Venta la Morena. Finding it was non-trivial; we asked the man at the hotel reception to mark it on a map and he marked it about two miles from where it really was. We found it eventually though, just as we were convinced that we were lost and were about to turn around and go back. This place was huge and specialised in barbecued meats. For starters, we ordered asparagus (I was already feeling the need for vegetables, but the asparagus was inevitably white, bottled/tinned Spanish asparagus which I didn’t enjoy hugely) and chorizo. For main course, barbecued pork loin (tasted very good, but quite a lot like a barbecued beef steak) and grilled sole (lovely fish, well cooked, with loooooads of garlic); both came with chips that weren’t that great.
On Wednesday night we ate at Cortijo Hnos Alba which was just down the road from our hotel. We arrived at 9pm to find only a couple of tables seated which meant we got a great table and were greeted with a basket of bread and some wonderful peppery oilives. The restaurant staff didn’t speak English but we managed to order some mussels and some Galician-style octopus. Fred enjoyed the octopus which was served on top of some potatoes and generously sprinkled with paprika but I found the paprika to be rather over-powering. My mussels however where probably the best either of us have ever eaten, they were perfectly cooked with very little flavouring but tasted wonderfully mussel-y and just like the sea.
We followed this with whitebait (the biggest, fattest and tastiest whitebait I’ve ever had) and turbot, which was simply served in large chunks (nice and meaty but a bit “rustic” with some of it cooked well and some of it undercooked and loads of large bones) with some potatoes and some rather mushy mixed vegetables that had probably been in a tin five minutes earlier - tasty fish but a shame about the attention to detail.
On Thursday we visited Casa Navarra, which is again a traditional Spanish restaurant where the staff spoke very little English and we had to do a fair amount of pointing and gesturing. In the foyer of the restaurant is a cooler cabinet full of huge racks of beef ribs. For starters we had white beans with clams (nice, but seemed rather a wintery dish) and some grilled peppers with olive oil which were rather good. On the menu was a “big beef chop”, which we figured must be a beef rib of the sort that we’d seen in the foyer. We ordered it and were told that it was a minimum of 700g, so we said we’d share it between us. When it arrived it was 900g, which was quite a lot of beef but we stuck to our task and finished it. It was nicely cooked but quite rare in parts considering that we’d asked for it “medium”. It was covered with a lot of nice crunchy salt. Accompaniments were a small lettuce and onion salad.
On our last night we ate at Valpariso which had been recommended to us by a friend and also appeared in the guide I mentioned above. It was a fabulously over-the-top restaurant which had a brilliant atmosphere. We were greeted with a glass of Cava and a selection of nuts, olives and breadsticks. We drank in the bar while browsing the menu and were able to view the entire (and not small) restaurant.
Fred chose the baked crab and avocado to start which was delicious, the avocado was lightly cooked and there was lots of succulent crab meat:
I opted for the baked aubergine with tomato, basil and cheese which both us enjoyed. The balance of vegetable to cheese was just right given the lack of vegetables we’d consumed and was a great way to start off the meal:
I then chose the pork cooked in cream (apparently Pele’s favourite dish) and while tasty, was slightly too rich for me:
Fred ordered the suckling lamb leg which he ate in almost complete silence, a sure sign he enjoyed it:
Although both of us were completely full we had no choice but to order dessert as the Flamenco dancing had just begun. Fred went for cheesecake and I went for ice-cream, both of which were brilliant and devoured despite our fullness. On asking for the bill, the waiter shook his head and returned a few minutes later with two more glasses of Cava which we enjoyed but were wary about since we had an early flight the next morning. We left the restaurant to the sound of Tina Turner and the idea that the evening had only just begun.
F&G
Thyme (and Roast Chicken)
As is tradition, on our first evening back from holiday we cooked roast chicken. On arriving home we noticed that our thyme plant had almost doubled in size. It seemed sensible therefore to stuff the chicken with thyme. It was delicious. We ate a lot of great food in Spain (more of which to come later) but we were both looking forward to our roast chicken and it didn’t disappoint.
We used some Golden Wonder potatoes from Sainsbury’s Heritage range, they soaked up a lot of oil but turned out really fluffy and crunched up brilliantly. We also had leeks, purple sprouting brocolli, runner beans and some fresh peas. While the chicken and potatoes were brilliant, the vegetables were even better. Something I think we can teach the Spanish
Glasshouse
Last night, we had dinner at Glasshouse in Kew which is owned by the same people that own Chez Bruce in Wandsworth and La Trompette in Chiswick. They categorise themselves as largely French influenced but leaning heavily on Spanish and Italian influences too.
We arrived at 7.30 and the restaurant was fairly empty but it soon filled up, we quickly tucked into the bread as we were starving and enjoyed a selction of sourdough, olive, walnut, raisin and rosemary foccacia.
I started with a spaghetti of rabbit and chanterelle mushrooms which was lovely. I was wary of having pasta as a starter but it was a delicate portion which balanced the earthiness of the rabbit and mushrooms with a light cream and tarragon sauce.
Fred opted for the duck salad with crispy onions and balsamic dressing and deep fried truffled egg, he really enjoyed it but I (as usual) found the balsamic too sweet.
Next, I chose the rump of lamb which was served with a black olive, tomato and red pepper dressing, green beans and mashed potatoes. The lamb was perfectly pink (they asked me if that was ok) and there was plenty of it, just as well as Fred enjoyed it too.
Fred chose the halibut with fondant leek and mashed potato. He felt the fish was slightly over-cooked but commented on the tastiness of the rest of the dish. I enjoyed what I tasted, the creamy sauce added an extra depth to the lightness of the fish.
Neither of us usually order dessert but I couldn’t resist the sound of the maple syrup ice cream with frosted pistachios and biscuit. The maple syrup flavouring was subtle and not too sweet and worked very well with the crunchy pistachios and the slightly peppery biscuit.
In order to alleviate my feelings of greed, Fred joined me in dessert and went for the only real choice: creme brulee. He was disappointed that the sugary top was cold but otherwise enjoyed it.
We didn’t have our proper camera with us so these are taken with my phone, hence the fuzziness and bad lighting.
We’re off on holiday tomorrow so no posts for a while, hopefully we’ll have lots of interesting pictures to show when we get back though.
Fred’s Spaghetti
This evening we were both rather tired, so didn’t fancy doing too much cooking and ended up making spaghetti with semi-randomly thrown together sauce. It all worked out rather well in the end. It might seem a bit egotistical to name it after myself, but it was Ginger’s idea to do so
The recipe is as follows… serves 2…
Ingredients:
1 medium red onion, finely diced (use a white onion if you like, but we only had red at the time)
1 large clove of garlic, crushed or sliced very thinly
50g anchovy fillets in oil, drained
250g cherry tomatoes
1 mild chilli, seeds removed and finely chopped (if you only have hot chillis, just use less)
1 large sprig of basil, leaves picked and ripped up rustically Jamie style
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
oil for frying
freshly ground black pepper
Method:
Heat the oil in a saucepan, then gently fry the onion for a few minutes before adding the garlic and frying for a few more minutes. Add the anchovies and chilli and continue frying, stirring often to break up the anchovies. When the anchovies have almost broken down into a paste, add the whole cherry tomatoes to the saucepan. Prick the tomatoes in case they pop later. Cook for about ten minutes, prodding the tomatoes every now and then until they pop, then season with black pepper and stir for a bit. When the sauce has reached a good consistency, stir in the basil leaves and add the tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and remove from the heat.
Oh yes, and good some spaghetti while all of this is happening. Then drain the spaghetti and add it to the sauce.
It turned out to be really well balanced. I was a bit worried at one point that it would be too sweet because of the cherry tomatoes, but the chilli (not that it was very noticeable, being a strangely mild version) and the saltiness of the anchovies balanced it out. It also had an almost creamy texture, which we put down to the way the anchovies cooked down and combined with the tomatoes. Yum. I ate too much of it of course.