Cheese on Toast. And Meatballs.
We both had relatively large lunches today, so decided to settle for cheese on toast for dinner. We also had some meatballs left over from last night, so decided to use those up. I piled my meatballs on top of my cheese on toast to create a sort of impromptu meatball pizza. Kerri was less juvenile and had her meatballs on the plate next to her cheese on toast.
Meatballs!
Another fine dinner suggested and started by Kerri. When I got home from a gruelling session of drinking free booze and buying discounted clothing, all I needed to do (again) was get my hands all gooey making meatballs out of a “wild beef” mince, onion, breadcrumbs and herb mixture. These meatballs went into a deliciously garlicky tomato sauce and cooked for twenty minutes. We served them on top of a pile of pasta (the same unnamed thin-tagliatelle style as before). They were really good, definitely one for the “cook again soon” pile.
This Week’s Vegetable Box
PARSNIPS!!!!!!!!!!!!! – very exciting, I love parsnips and they’ll go well with the pork belly we’re planning this weekend
Curly kale – mmmmm, will also go well with the pork
Spinach – second hated (after cabbage), Stephen likes it though so hopefully he’ll be looking like Popeye at the end of the week 🙂
Brocolli – I quite like it but this isn’t a particularly good example, it’s soft already and a bit brown…brocolli and stilton soup maybe?
Courgettes – good for roasting, we haven’t had those for a while 😉
Onions – useful as we’ve run out (only because I cancelled them two weeks in a row though)
Mushroommmmmmmmmmmmmms – weekend breakfast
Oranges – these smell really orangey
Apples – cox I think, these are a bit soft though, might have to become a pie
Kiwi fruit – can’t be bothered with the seeds
So, all in all, not a bad haul. I cancelled cabbage, carrots and potatoes this week because we’ve been over-run with them lately. No bananas though, think this is the first time ever; Stephen won’t be happy.
Fishcakes
Kerri suggested fishcakes tonight and it was a good idea. She had made most of it when I got home and all that was left for me to do was to get my hands all gooey shaping them into cakes and putting them into the breadcrumbs. They contained salmon, potato and some spinach that we needed to use up. Adding a bit of salt and pepper made them really good. We had them with roasted vegetables, but as we seem to have had those often lately we figured they didn’t warrant a picture.
I also cooked something lentilly with spinach. Not sure if it’ll make an appearance on the site though. It is on the stove, cooling down in its pot and awaiting its as yet undetermined fate.
Blurry Soup
Kitchen was steamy when Stephen took the picture 🙂
This was supposed to be leek and potato but tasted more like potato with a hint of leek. I wasn’t that keen on the texture of it either. It used up last week’s vegetable box leeks though so not all bad, and it warmed me up.
Chicken and Cabbage
Did I mention that we got a cabbage in our vegetable box again this week? For the fourth week in a row. I used to like cabbage. Maybe I’ll like it again one day but, at the moment, it’s up there with spinach as of my least favourite vegetables (I used to like spinach too until we had it three times in a row).
Anyway, we used up some of it last night in the Chorizo and Cabbage and today, I found a recipe on the Abel and Cole website that sounded promising….Chicken and Braised Cabbage. So that’s what I did. It was ok and actually, with a little tweaking, I think it could be good (it’s got bacon in it, of course it can be good) but today it was just ok.
Fry the bacon with some thyme, add the cabbage, sweat for a while, add chicken stock and serve with grilled chicken. Part of the problem was that the flavours didn’t seem to combine well, I think this is because the chicken is cooked seperately. If (and it’s a big if, because I’ve marked cabbage with a sad face on the vegetable box website so we don’t get it again any time soon) I do it again, I would fry off the chicken with the bacon and add some onion.
Here it is anyway, I’ve really sold it to you haven’t I?
British Sausage Week
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6101430.stm
But also National Vegan Week, what a strange coincidence. I know which one Stephen and I will be supporting though.
Bang* goes the diet 🙂
*bang, like banger, geddit?
Happy Halloween
Chorizo and Cabbage
Stephen was given a huge (and really tasty) chorizo for his birthday and we were given a huge cabbage (again) by the vegetable box people so, in an effort to use up the cabbage, and just because we wanted to eat chorizo, we came up with the delight you see before you. Chorizo, fried with onions, green cabbage added with a splash of water, potatoes (previously boiled) all mixed up with crème frâiche and salt and pepper. It took about 15 minutes to cook, and about five to eat 🙂
Would also be good with sautéed potatoes rather than boiled.
British Tapas
Being my birthday, we decided to have a party. Kerri and I had been discussing the topic of “British Tapas” for quite a while and talking about what sorts of dishes (if any) would both fit this category and be delicious. So we decided to do some experimentation and invited some people round to be guinea pigs.
Unfortunately, with all the rushing around we were doing, we didn’t get pictures of everything. In fact we didn’t get pictures of most things. Hopefully some of our guests took pictures that we can add in later. The menu was, roughly in the order in which dishes appeared (but this was not necessarily the originally intended order):
cheese – Tymsboro
pâté – a salmon one and a game one, accompanied by triangles of toast
smoked salmon on buttered wholemeal bread, topped with a dill
black pudding slices
sausages – very good Duchy Originals sausages, served with two types of mustard
pheasant thigh pieces cooked with cider and crème frâiche
mini yorkshire puddings topped with rare roast beef, horseradish sauce and gravy
baby new potatoes with butter
runner beans
Chantenay baby carrots (very carroty!)
raspberry trifle
more cheese – Stinking Bishop, Montgomery’s Cheddar and Swallet
walnuts
Most things turned out really well. The sausages were really good, the pheasant pieces were good, the yorkshire puddings were brilliant. The trifle was excellent. The cheeses were good. Mmmm cheese.
Pictures that we do have…
Tymsboro Cheese
Game pate
Toast Triangles
Smoked Salmon
Walnuts
