This was originally going to be something and watercress pizza but something went wrong with out shopping order and we ended up with peashoots instead. I had selected watercress because the English stuff is just coming into season, these peashoots were from Portugal so not exactly food-mile friendly but tasty nonetheless.

We tossed the raw peashoots in some pesto before adding them to the cooked pizza, a technique we’ve used before with rocket. We also reserved some of the mozarella and added that with the peashoots, a good way to lighten everything up.

We had a small piece of steak in the freezer which wasn’t really enough for a whole meal but was too much to throw away. We had no plan for dinner tonight so ended up stretching the steak by adding lots of vegetables to make fajitas. We haven’t had these for ages and they were really good, not sure why we left it so long.

Yesterday’s leftover chicken reheated and served with vegetables that had been roasted with chilli, cumin and garlic. A handful of coriander and some warm wraps and that was tonight’s dinner. Perfect Monday food.

While I was planning meals for the weekend, I decided that I wanted to roast a chicken with Morrocan flavourings, in a similar way to this leg of lamb. I bought a bulb of fennel, some olives and some preserved lemons and set about putting together said roast chicken. It didn’t take long for me to realise that I was actually just making chicken tagine with a whole chicken instead of pieces.

At this point, Stephen and I had a conversation in which he said something like “Shall we just make chicken tagine?” but I stupidly ignored him and continued with my original plan. I should have listened to him. If I had then we would have had a really good chicken tagine instead of a dish which was very much like chicken tagine but not quite as good.

Our chicken tagine recipe is here, try it, it’s brilliant.

I got an email a couple of weeks ago asking if I was interested in trying some bacon. We get a lot of emails asking us to try things and we mostly say no, mostly the products aren’t that interesting, I don’t like writing reviews and, if I don’t like the product then I feel bad writing about it and potentially upsetting the supplier. I wasn’t going to turn down the offer of free bacon though so replied instantly and said yes. I wasn’t however expecting to receive 40 rashers of the stuff.

We used some in the spaghetti alla vodka we ate earlier in the week but the point of the free bacon was to see how the supermarket product compared to the premium bacon from a butcher. I didn’t have any butcher’s bacon and I wasn’t going to add to the 40 rashers so we just fried some up this morning for breakfast. Well, Stephen did. And here’s what he had to say about it.

Two rashers of each type went into the pan. One of the packs said “no added water” on it and I nodded in approval as I laid it into the frying pan along with the others. When cooking, the “no added water” rashers didn’t get covered in white foam and the others did. I pointed this out to Kerri and she (having read the marketing information) said that they were all supposed to be dry cure and that none of them were supposed to release anything. Hmm. I inspected the other packs and they did indeed say “dry cure” on them. Definite release of water though. I should have taken a picture at the time, but when the picture above was taken I had already turned them over.

Anyway, taste is what counts of course, so on to that. Armed with a rasher of each type, some toast, some fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms and a fried egg, I set to work. Tasting the different bacon on their own first before mixing them with anything else, one particular thing stood out: salt. They were all very salty. The flavour and texture did vary slightly between them: one was more porky and thicker, one tasted more like gammon but was oddly flat in texture and the other was somewhere in between in most respects.

The saltiness did tend to overpower the other flavours when eaten on their own, making it a little difficult to discern interesting differences. When eaten with tomatoes, mushrooms, egg, etc, the saltiness was diluted and it didn’t matter so much and they did complement the rest of the breakfast. I was hoping to be wowed by at least one of them which didn’t happen unfortunately, but all three were better than the lower quality supermarket alternatives or bulk generic catering packs that I’ve had the misfortune to be served in some establishments and I would happily eat them in preference for both taste and also animal welfare considerations.

(The bacon was sent to us by the PR company behind “I Love Real Bacon”, I can’t see a website for them though, just a Facebook page).

I started a new job last week and one of the many good things about it is that I get to work from home and therefore save myself an extra two hours a day that I used to spend at the mercy of London Underground. I can also work flexible hours so, in theory, I could start work early and then finish early, giving myself lots of time in the evening to spend in the kitchen. I haven’t quite got myself into a routine yet though so what generally happens is, I finish work and then realise there’s very little food in the house and I have no idea what to cook. I meant to resolve this at the weekend by planning lots of meals that I could start in the morning before work or be ready to prepare when my working day is finished. I didn’t get round to it though, I did however manage to buy vodka which meant we could eat this (original recipe here), never let it be said that I don’t have my priorities in order.

In a happy coincidence, a rather nice man knocked on my door yesterday and presented me with 40 rashers of bacon (more on that later) so I did the only thing I could in that situation, immediately fried some up and added it to the pasta sauce. Of course, everything is better with bacon but this took quite a lot of seasoning and lemon juice before it was properly balanced (Sainsbury’s have stopped selling my favourite San Marzano tomatoes so I tried some tinned cherry tomatoes which weren’t brilliant: too sweet and too much skin) but, once it was balanced, it was a good combination.

Of course, now I not only have to work out what we’re going to eat next week but I also have to work out how to incorporate those 40 rashers of bacon before they expire.

We had some friends over for dinner on Saturday night and, after exploring pretty much every cuisine we could think of, we settled on Mexican food. The reason it took us so long to decide is that we wanted to cook Maddhur Jaffrey’s chicken but in a different style. We both thought it would work brilliantly with a Thai twist but our local Thai supermarket is closed and we knew we would struggle to get all the relevant ingredients. So, we went Mexican instead since we had everything we needed.

The original Indian recipe uses yoghurt in the first part of the marinating process but we reasoned that lime juice would do a similar job. With hindsight, I think we should have used yoghurt as the flavours didn’t penetrate the chicken quite as well as they did last time. Aside from that, it all worked out pretty well. The chicken didn’t seem quite as moist as it did last time but it wasn’t too noticeable, some extra marinating juices would have been useful here though.

We also decided to try our luck with a pork fillet which didn’t work so well. Pork shoulder would be very good though due to all that extra fat.

Beans, green rice, tortillas and guacamole completed the meal.

(I’ll post the chicken recipe tomorrow, Stephen did most of the work and I’m not sure what went into the marinade).

Oh dear, another unintentional break in posting due to busy schedules and pre-summer diets. We have of course been eating but none of it has been that interesting unfortunately. There just hasn’t been the time to think about food or spend much time preparing it. And healthy food isn’t really my forte so there’s been a lot of salads with some kind of protein and quite a lot of toast.

This chicken dish was interesting though and was enjoyed at the height of my mustard obsession. Simple pot-roasted chicken with a variety of mustards added to the cooking juices. A good alternative to roast chicken for a Sunday lunch – you don’t get the crispy skin but since it’s not diet-compliant, I can’t have it anyway. The chicken will remain moist even if you forget about it for a little while so it’s also a good alternative if you’re not confident with timings.

Pot Roasted Chicken with Mustard

This doesn’t really require a recipe but the steps are:

Brown the chicken all over
Transfer it to a casserole dish and sit it on top of some onions, carrot, celery and a bay leaf
Add some water and wine
Put the casserole dish into an oven preheated to 180 degrees
Cook for about an hour and a half
Remove the chicken to a plate to rest, cover with foil
Put the casserole dish on the hob
Skim the fat
Add mustard of your choice
Bring to the boil
Reduce the heat and simmer
Check for seasoning and thicken if you wish
Serve

We were out all day last Sunday and ended up in the pub in need of something to eat. When this happens I always avoid the Traditional Sunday Roast since I don’t think it’s ever as good as the real home-cooked version. For some reason, last Sunday I broke my golden rule and was rewarded with a plate of food that was edible but by no means remarkable. It gave me a craving for a proper Sunday lunch so this morning, Stephen went off in search of beef while I got on with the accompaniments.

When he returned, he was clutching a large bag which contained a rib of beef, well two ribs actually. We followed Hugh’s instructions again but were taken by surprise at the speed the beef cooked which meant we ended up with meat that was just over the medium-rare we prefer. This was a tasty cut of beef though so the flavour wasn’t affected too much. We really must remember to pay more attention to the meat while it’s cooking though since this is a situation we find ourselves in all too often.

Great Yorkshire pudding (that wasn’t frozen like last week), crunchy roast potatoes, average parsnips and a decent selection of vegetables made for a good lunch. There was plenty of excellent gravy too, another bonus of eating at home and not a pub/restaurant.

The “This Week Last Year” plugin on the sidebar tells me that we ate roast beef exactly a year ago. A further search through the archives reveals that we haven’t had it since. Far too long.

My obsession with mustard continues. As does it seems my obsession with breaded meat, especially for Friday night dinners. The two together obviously equal chicken kiev with a mustard-butter instead of the usual garlic. We were going to call this Chicken Dijon (since the chicken is stuffed with Dijon mustard) but that already exists and I couldn’t think of anything else. Not that it matters, what matters is that it was a good combination and the butter did a very good job of staying inside the chicken and not leaking all over the frying pan which is always good.

No lengthy recipe required, just stuff the chicken with the mustardy butter (I used about 2 tablespoons of mustard to about 3 tablespoons of butter along with some salt and pepper and some chopped parsley), roll the chicken in some seasoned flour, then beaten egg and finally some breadcrumbs. Add some olive oil to your frying pan, heat and then brown the chicken on both sides.

Transfer to the oven and cook for about 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. Serve with some kind of potato and vegetable – we ended up eating the salad I had prepared as a starter hence the rather lonely looking chicken up there.