Moussaka
We’ve got a busy week coming up so thought we would cook something that could be frozen and reheated when we were hungry. We didn’t get to go to the butcher yesterday so were reliant on supermarket mince, we chose beef mince to make our moussaka as we’ve been disappointed by the lamb mince we’ve had before.
We used a slightly different recipe this time so it’ll be interesting to see how it comes out. If it tastes as good as it looks though then I think it’ll be brilliant.
G
Chicory
I’ve not cooked chicory before, mistakengly believing it was related to fennel and therefore tasting of aniceed (which I believe to be Rong) but toady we attempted an Italian braised dish.
The chicory was steamed in water and lemon then baked in the oven with garlic, parsley, breadcrumbs and pine kernels.
It was ok, Stephen said he preferred the flavour before it was baked, I felt a bit ambivalent about it.
G
Rabbit with Garlic
Today, we cooked rabbit. It’s been on our “Things To Cook Soon” list for a while and yesterday, we found some in Selfridges Food Hall.
The recipe was from Fergus Henderson’s “Nose To Tail Eating”, a book we’ve had for a while but not cooked from.
It was quite a simple recipe, brown the rabbit then add garlic (20 cloves!), shallots (12!), lardons, parsley, thyme, white wine and dry sherry. It was baked in the oven for an hour and a half.
It was really good, it did taste a bit like chicken but had a stronger flavour and the meat itself was denser.
We served it with winter greens.
Cumberland Sausages and Mashed Potatoes
Tonight, we had planned to make beef stroganoff but when we came to cook it we found the beef wasn’t in good shape. So, we made a quick dash to the deli to find something else. Our choices were fairly limited so we resorted to sausages. And boy am I glad we did. They were really tasty, fat and juicy and nicely browned on the outside. We served them with mashed potatoes, steamed cabbage and carrots and some of Stephen’s extra-special onion gravy.
This is Stephen’s plate, obviously. Mine was all nicely arranged with nothing bumping into each other 🙂
G
Happy Pancake Day!
Wow, two food festivals in one week! Tonight, we made pancakes. Stephen had a variety, one with leftover meatballs, one with lemon and sugar and this one, that I made for him. Chocolate spread with raspberries. I thought of it too late though so the raspberries were still frozen. This would have been ok if the chocolate spread had been hot. But it was cold. It looks pretty though.
Potatoes and Chorizo
We have a glut of potatoes and some leftover chorizo so decided to make a sort of patatas bravas type-thingy. It was my idea but Stephen actually cooked it, I think he basically fried off the par-boiled potatoes and removed them from the pan. Cooked the onion and chorizo with some garlic, threw the potatoes back into the pan with some parsley and some passata and, voila, lunch 🙂
It was good but I didn’t much like the texture of the potatoes. I think that’s because I can’t stop thinking about the splendid sautee potatoes we had last week though.
G
Meatballs with Spaghetti and Spicy Tomato Sauce
We had an interesting trip to the butcher last week, we needed some beef mince to make something or other so the nice butcher man (who we think is called Paul though we are yet to confirm this) weighed it out and got on with finding the other things we needed. When he came to putting all our things together, the mince had disappeared. He then had to go and grind some more mince, and, because we’d had to wait, he kindly threw in some extra. When we got home we realised there was far too much for what we actually needed (I think it was for the cottage pie) so we divided it up and froze some.
While we were cooking up our Chinese New Year feast yesterday, we realised that that we didn’t have anything for this evening’s dinner; I like to cook something in advance on a Sunday so that we don’t have to worry too much when we get home from work on a Monday, going back to work after the weekend is stressful enough. We decided to use the mince in some meatballs.
We made them to the same recipe as last time (beef, onions, garlic, parsley, nutmeg, red wine and italian herbs) and then fried them off when we got home from work this evening. While they were browning, we made a spicy tomato sauce (shallots, garlic, chilli, red wine, tomatoes, tomato pureee, s&p, anchovy essence and parsley) and threw the meatballs into the sauce to finish cooking.
We served the meatballs and (very) spicy tomato sauce with some really good spaghetti (it was slightly fatter than normal and quite rough). It was brilliant.
Last time we made meatballs, we had enough left over to have the next day with cheese on toast, one of my favourite leftover meal experiences of all time; sadly, these were so good we only have two left. Stephen reckons he is going to have them on pancakes tomorrow…I think I might eat them when he’s not looking though 🙂
G
Vietnamese and Laotian Food for Chinese New Year
For Chinese new year, we decided to cook Vietnamese and Laotian food. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
I realised that we had our ingredients laid out a little like the “store cupboard” photograph that seems standard fodder for the introduction section of many cookbooks, so I took a picture:
First course was squid served with chilli-garlic dipping sauce. The squid was boiled so wasn’t that interesting on its own, but it went well with the dipping sauce. It was a success but not a must-cook-again-really-soon sort of success. This was the Vietnamese recipe.
Next up was a chicken and potato curry. With the addition of some salt, this was really tasty and Kerri had to stop me stuffing myself and making myself ill. This was the Laotian dish.
Lastly, pocky and mochi and a (non-edible) Chinese lantern…
Crumpets
For breakfast this morning, we had crumpets with bacon and cheese followed by crumpets with honey. Yum. This picture doesn’t really do it justice though, I had the settings wrong.
G
Mussels
We’ve been meaning to make this for ages but, for some reason, haven’t got round to it. I’m glad we finally did though because it was really tasty and so simple.
Fry onions (or shallots) in some butter, add the mussels with some wine and garlic. Cook for about four minutes.
Remove mussels, turn up the heat and reduce the liquid, add cream and parsley, serve with crusty bread.
G
