Author Archive
Corned Beef – The Story Begins
As you might imagine, I read a lot of food blogs but mostly UK based ones. There are an awful lot of American sites but their seasons are different and so is their produce and it all seems so far away from what’s happening here. I can never remember what arugula is and I don’t […]
Read More..>>Lamb Chops and Minted Pea Puree
We spent most of last Saturday cooking for a family lunch the following day and, as a result, neither of us have felt much like cooking recently which is why things have been a bit quiet around here. After a day of catching up with friends and watching the Grand National, neither of us were […]
Read More..>>Cottage Pie with Two Cuts of Beef
This doesn’t really give a good idea of the quantity but this was enough cottage pie to feed 12 people. It seemed like a good option for catering on a large-ish scale but as we don’t have any catering-sized pans, it ended up taking us nearly all day as we carefully browned each batch of […]
Read More..>>Potted Ham
With the leftover ham from Wednesday’s soup, we made potted ham using this recipe. My concerns about adding fatty pancetta to the already-fatty pea and ham soup were short lived; this recipe calls for almost an entire packet of butter. I had previously intended on using up the ham with some lentils but, given the […]
Read More..>>La Dolce Vita
This afternoon, Stephen and I went along to the trade day of La Dolce Vita at Olympia. While not all about food and wine, there was certainly more than enough of both to keep us both occupied for the afternoon. We sampled lots of different oil, cheese and cured meats and were particularly impressed with […]
Read More..>>Pea and Ham Soup
When I was small, we ate peas fairly often but I always hated them. In an effort to get rid of them and enjoy the rest of my dinner, I would eat them all first with lots of gravy to disguise the taste. I suppose all those years of intense-pea-eating must have slowly changed my […]
Read More..>>Chilli
I’m still not completely happy with this, hence the re-appearance after only a couple of weeks as I try to perfect it. I think we need to replace our hot chilli powder as it’s probably quite old and also use more, fresh chilli. It definitely tasted better the next day so next time I’ll try […]
Read More..>>Pork Chops with Herbed Lentils and Mustard Sauce
We don’t eat pork chops a lot and when we do we stick to one or two favourites. Tonight I thought I would try something different and decided on a mustard, cream sauce. We cooked the pork chops first and while they were resting, deglazed the pan with some sherry. Leave to bubble for a […]
Read More..>>Braised Ox Cheeks with Mashed Potato
At the threat of angering our vegetarian readers even further (not that I realised we had any until today), today we cooked some ox cheeks. I first saw ox cheeks in Waitrose a few weeks ago and had wanted to use them in a pie but they didn’t have any left when I went back […]
Read More..>>Halibut in a Cream and Saffron Sauce with Fondant Potatoes
You could call this a disaster, given that it didn’t turn out anything like we expected it to. It wasn’t brilliant but it was definitely edible and, with a little tweaking, could be a good dish. We started off by making the fondant potatoes, using this Gordon Ramsay recipe. It’s quite a lengthy process and […]
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