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
Valentine Dinner
Kerri and I planned a Valentine’s dinner – she planned the starter and dessert and I planned the main course. We only found out what each other had planned when we started preparing it on the day. Very exciting!
First was scallops with chorizo and salad leaves. These went well together; maybe the chorizo could have been a little thinner though to make it a bit less overpowering. Very tasty nonetheless.
Served with the scallops and chorizo was some toasted ciabatta, served on the very lovely heart-shaped chopping board that Kerri had had made for me for a Valentine’s present.
Next up was rack of lamb with sauteed potatoes, mashed butternut and carrots. My plan was that two lamb cutlets would look a bit like a heart, but the plan didn’t work out very well. The lamb was good though; it was salt marsh lamb from our local butcher. The carrots were vaguelly heart shaped, not sure if it’s possible to make that out from here.
Kerri had planned a chocolate-related dessert, but we were too full for it after all of that so we’re saving it for another time. We did have a few chocolate truffles in its place though… yummy.
F
Happy Valentine’s Day
For breakfast, I made heart shaped cranberry and orange muffins.
G
Chicken and Artichoke and Mushroom Pie
This started off in our heads as a casserole but, somewhere along the line, became a pie, and a tasty pie at that.
We started off by browning the chicken and removing it from the pan, next we softened some onion, garlic, celery and carrot. Then we threw in the mushrooms (chestnut, white and another strange type that Stephen can’t remember the name of) and the peeled and halved Jerusalem artichokes. When this was all cooked down, we added some chicken stock, salt and pepper, bay and thyme and cooked it for about an hour – basically, until the majority of the liquid had disipated.
We then put it in a pie dish (the new red one, isn’t it pretty?), added a puff pastry lid (and some decorative hearts as it is almost Valentine’s Day) and baked it in the oven for about half an hour.
We served it with winter greens and peas.
Venison Casserole
We’d been talking about cooking venison for a while, so today we did. We cooked it in a casserole with bacon, onions, mushrooms and red wine and ate it with mashed potato, winter greens and red cabbage. The casserole turned out rather well – the meat was tender with a typically venisonny (is that a word?) flavour and texture to it and the sauce had a good depth of flavour. The red cabbage on the other hand was rather too tart to eat much of – it was cooked with juniper berries, apple juice and cranberries. We left most of it behind.
F
Pizza
We’d planned to make pizza on Friday night, but went to the pub instead. So, we made it on Saturday night instead. We used our normal dough recipe but, this time it was a bit doughier. Not sure why.
We topped it with the cheat’s Waitrose bruschetta topping, some really peppery salami, some artichokes and some olives and ate it on our laps while watching a DVD. It was good but next time we’re going to vary the toppings – roasted peppers and onions and maybe some tuna (for Stephen).
G
