Carpet Picnic
On Friday night we had a “picnic” at home with a mixture of Italian nibbly things and some French cheese. Marinated olives, tricolore salad (with really nice mozarella), San Danielle prosciutto, Napoli salami and Munster cheese.
Linguine with Prawns and Asparagus
A lovely friend of mine bought me the lovely Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros recipe book for my birthday. I read the whole book cover to cover on the train home and I’ve read it a couple of times since, and marvelled at the beautiful photographs, but never cooked from it.
Tonight, in order to check the “using asparagus in more interesting ways than just steaming and serving with butter” and the “cook from the birthday book” boxes, we chose this recipe.
It was good, if a little complex; not least because we went via the pub on the way home. I really liked the fact that you boiled the asparagus then chopped off the tips, pureed the stems then mixed it all together with the prawns. I like recipes that use all aspects of the ingredients, maximising their different flavours in different ways.
We tweaked it slightly, adding lemon juice and more seasoning. I’d cook it again…maybe sans wine on the way home though 🙂
G
Presents!
Can you even begin to imagine how excited I am? This beautiful object you see before you is ours and will be happily living in our kitchen in less than four hours!
Please send me your casserole recipes!
G
Thai Red Curry – again
We last had this on Thursday and it was brilliant. Stephen had very cleverly made up double the amount of paste we needed so tonight, all we had to do was add a little extra chilli (it was brilliant last time but not that spicy) and voila, a brilliant, spicy Thai red curry.
We remembered to use the pretty paper placemats we bought in Chinatown too.
G
Roast Lamb with Anchovies and Garlic
Today we had a leg of lamb for the first time in ages. We inserted little pieces of anchovy and garlic into it before roasting. The anchovy melted away and gave the lamb a lovely flavour without being fishy at all. It was a good thing too because it wasn’t the best lamb – next time we have lamb we need to plan in advance instead of just buying it from Waitrose. Waitrose with their irritating “lamb imported from the other side of the world only” policy.
We served it with roast potatoes, parsnips, spring greens, peas and gravy. And some home made mint sauce that we’d done in a rush and was not very good: another thing to plan in advance next time.
On the subject of mint, our mint plant is doing well and we repotted it to a larger pot today. Mojitoes for all!
Crisps
Last night we were very bad and had crisps for dinner. No picture either; the bag is in the bin.
Friday Barbecue
Gazpacho for Lunch…
I had a day off today, so had to look around for lunch. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t make it myself; I bought some gazpacho from our local deli. It was good and tasted a lot fresher than carton soups from supermarkets.
Thai Red Curry
Having cooked Thai green curry a few weeks ago, we decided to try our hand at red curry. The recipe we used was fairly similar to the green curry recipe except that it used red curry paste rather than green curry paste. And the main difference in the paste recipe was the use of red chillies instead of green. Lots more mortar and pestle action which I enjoyed.
I got the chilli ratio slightly wrong though. The recipe called for a certain weight of dried red chilli but we had fresh. So I attempted to estimate the correct amount of fresh chilli to be the same as dried, but got it wrong and the paste was not quite as hot as it should have been. It was still very tasty however, and slightly sweeter than the green curry. Kerri said it was one of the nicest things she had ever tasted, which I took as very high praise indeed.
Unfortunately, the dish in the picture is a bit messy because by the time we got around to serving it we were a bit tipsy.
Chicken
Today, we decided to cook something with chicken. After the elaborateness of yesterday’s meal, this seems a little plain and dull but it was actually very tasty and could easily be adapted into a number of different meals.
Chicken thighs, red pepper, red onion, courgette, mushrooms, garlic, rosemary and some disappointing wine that had been languishing at the bottom of the fridge for too long. All chopped up and thrown into a roasting dish…cooked for about half an hour and served with crushed Jersey Royals and purple sprouting brocolli. A tasty, quick mid-week meal.
G
