Glasshouse
Last night, we had dinner at Glasshouse in Kew which is owned by the same people that own Chez Bruce in Wandsworth and La Trompette in Chiswick. They categorise themselves as largely French influenced but leaning heavily on Spanish and Italian influences too.
We arrived at 7.30 and the restaurant was fairly empty but it soon filled up, we quickly tucked into the bread as we were starving and enjoyed a selction of sourdough, olive, walnut, raisin and rosemary foccacia.
I started with a spaghetti of rabbit and chanterelle mushrooms which was lovely. I was wary of having pasta as a starter but it was a delicate portion which balanced the earthiness of the rabbit and mushrooms with a light cream and tarragon sauce.
Stephen opted for the duck salad with crispy onions and balsamic dressing and deep fried truffled egg, he really enjoyed it but I (as usual) found the balsamic too sweet.
Next, I chose the rump of lamb which was served with a black olive, tomato and red pepper dressing, green beans and mashed potatoes. The lamb was perfectly pink (they asked me if that was ok) and there was plenty of it, just as well as Stephen enjoyed it too.
Stephen chose the halibut with fondant leek and mashed potato. He felt the fish was slightly over-cooked but commented on the tastiness of the rest of the dish. I enjoyed what I tasted, the creamy sauce added an extra depth to the lightness of the fish.
Neither of us usually order dessert but I couldn’t resist the sound of the maple syrup ice cream with frosted pistachios and biscuit. The maple syrup flavouring was subtle and not too sweet and worked very well with the crunchy pistachios and the slightly peppery biscuit.
In order to alleviate my feelings of greed, Stephen joined me in dessert and went for the only real choice: creme brulee. He was disappointed that the sugary top was cold but otherwise enjoyed it.
We didn’t have our proper camera with us so these are taken with my phone, hence the fuzziness and bad lighting.
We’re off on holiday tomorrow so no posts for a while, hopefully we’ll have lots of interesting pictures to show when we get back though.
Fred’s Spaghetti
This evening we were both rather tired, so didn’t fancy doing too much cooking and ended up making spaghetti with semi-randomly thrown together sauce. It all worked out rather well in the end. It might seem a bit egotistical to name it after myself, but it was Kerri’s idea to do so 🙂
The recipe is as follows… serves 2…
Ingredients:
1 medium red onion, finely diced (use a white onion if you like, but we only had red at the time)
1 large clove of garlic, crushed or sliced very thinly
50g anchovy fillets in oil, drained
250g cherry tomatoes
1 mild chilli, seeds removed and finely chopped (if you only have hot chillis, just use less)
1 large sprig of basil, leaves picked and ripped up rustically Jamie style
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
oil for frying
freshly ground black pepper
Method:
Heat the oil in a saucepan, then gently fry the onion for a few minutes before adding the garlic and frying for a few more minutes. Add the anchovies and chilli and continue frying, stirring often to break up the anchovies. When the anchovies have almost broken down into a paste, add the whole cherry tomatoes to the saucepan. Prick the tomatoes in case they pop later. Cook for about ten minutes, prodding the tomatoes every now and then until they pop, then season with black pepper and stir for a bit. When the sauce has reached a good consistency, stir in the basil leaves and add the tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and remove from the heat.
Oh yes, and good some spaghetti while all of this is happening. Then drain the spaghetti and add it to the sauce.
It turned out to be really well balanced. I was a bit worried at one point that it would be too sweet because of the cherry tomatoes, but the chilli (not that it was very noticeable, being a strangely mild version) and the saltiness of the anchovies balanced it out. It also had an almost creamy texture, which we put down to the way the anchovies cooked down and combined with the tomatoes. Yum. I ate too much of it of course.
Roast Loin of Pork
Roast pork is my favourite but we don’t eat it that often (1 April 2007 according to the archives) so I was really looking forward to lunch today and I wasn’t disappointed. The meat was tender and tasty and produced fantastic, crackly crackling – we achieved this by leaving the meat uncovered in the fridge overnight and then just before cooking, covering it in boiling water. Dry the meat thoroughly and rub lots of salt into the scored skin. Cook as high as your oven will go for the first 20 minutes and then turn down to 180.
We served it with stuffing, roast potatoes, sauteed leeks, peas and cauliflower cheese. Delicious.
Aubergine Parmigiana
I had this for lunch recently and really enjoyed it so yesterday, we decided to try making our own using Jamie Oliver’s recipe from Jamie’s Italy.
We were somewhat underwhelmed by it though, the flavours were good but I don’t think we griddled the aubergines for long enough as they were still slightly tough. It also needed a lot more seasoning and I think the sauce needed to be thicker. Looking at the recipe, it seems we forgot the basil too.
We’d had a big lunch so decided just to have this on it’s own, I think it would work well with lamb chops or barbecued meat though.
Epoisses and Salami
Last night, we’d planned to go food shopping and pick up something for dinner while we were there. There seemed to be an awful lot of traffic though so we decided to postpone our trip, we couldn’t however postpone our hunger so opted to pick up some snacks from the deli instead. We chose Epoisses, salami, olives and Poulain bread, all of which was lovely and meant that when we finally went shopping we weren’t tempted to buy up the whole shop.
Tortilla
Stephen made this at the weekend and has been eating it for lunches during the week. There are lots of different recipes for tortilla and many variations on the fillings but the method remains fairly constant:
Finely slice potatoes and onions, fry slowly in olive oil
Mix together five eggs, season, add to potato and onion mixture
Fry for 15 minutes on low heat, then flip and fry for a further 5 minutes
This time we added peas but tomatoes have made an appearance in the past too.
Pasta Amatriciana
Today was a fairly typical Tuesday, it got to 4.30 and we didn’t have anything planned for dinner. Stephen still isn’t feeling very well and I have tooth ache so neither of us were particularly in the mood for cooking. This usually means we eat pasta so, rather than rely on one of our old favourites, I started browsing for a quick and easy recipe when I came across amatriciana. My favourite pasta dishes are tomato based and feature garlic and chilli so this ticked all the boxes.
I picked up the ingredients on the way home and then started to worry that the super-quick-idiot-proof recipe I’d found wasn’t authentic so I did some more browsing and discovered that most of the recipes were the same, they featured the same main ingredients at least and it was mostly just the method that varied.
So, I softened a chopped onion in some olive oil and then added some pancetta and cooked it for a couple of minutes. Then I added a clove of chopped garlic and a whole, chopped red chilli. Cooked for another couple of minutes before adding some tomatoes and some pepper. I left it to simmer for about 20 minutes before adding some torn basil and some grated parmesan.
It’s got potential but my version was a little too sweet, I tried to temper this by adding some lemon juice but I obviously didn’t add enough. It needed more chilli too. It was a very quick dish and had a lot of flavour so if I can sort the sweetness out then I think it could be a regular fixture.
Roast Chicken
Stephen hasn’t been feeling very well this weekend and suggested roast chicken for lunch today. It turned out to be a lovely, warm day which would have been perfect for barbecuing but we already had our chicken so decided to stick to our original plan.
It’s not the most exciting meal, we eat it a lot and we generally always cook it the same way, but it’s always tasty and never disappoints. Which is just what you need when you’re not feeling very well.
Mexican Barbecue
We rather enjoy having themed barbecues rather than just buying a load of assorted dead animals and throwing them onto the fire. In collaboration with some friends, we decided that a Mexican themed barbecue would definitely be worth doing. So we invited them round, did some hunting for appropriate recipes and got started.
For snacks, we had tortilla chips of course, with lovely fresh salsa mexicana and some excellent guacamole (which isn’t in the picture because our guests brought it along later). We also made some spicy nuts, but these weren’t that good and lacked salt.
Kerri had seen a “barbecue wok” in the shop and was keen to try it out. So we bought it and thought that we could try using it to make fajitas on the barbecue. It is a strange looking device, looking rather like a thin wok with holes in it. It took a little longer than making normal fajitas, but the result was rather good, with the barbecue taste coming through.
The “main course” was Mexican style pork ribs based on this recipe. We were planning to cook about half that much, but ended up with huge amounts of ribs and needed to do the whole amount. The ribs were coated in a dry rub that included chilli powder, paprika, ground cumin and salt:
We left this for four hours for the flavours to penetrate the meat, then baked them in the oven for about an hour and a half before finishing them for ten minutes a side on the barbecue while brushing with the honey, lime and spice glaze. They burnt a little, but that just added crunchiness:
We rested them for a while, then sliced them into individual ribs, which turned out to be lovely and succulent on the inside while sticky and smoky on the outside. Yum.
With these we had black beans:
And Mexican rice:
It all turned out rather well (other than the nuts). Lots of preparation, but well worth the result, both in the eating and in the good time we had with our friends.
Sausage and Mash Pie
A couple of weeks ago, Stephen had a Higgidy pie for dinner which was really good. While wandering around the supermarket last night wondering what to eat, we remembered that they also made a sausage and mash pie which we were both intrigued by. We picked one up and by the time we’d put the shopping away, the pie was cooked.
Unfortunately, we were both really disappointed. We both had different ideas about what would be inside the pie, I imagined small pieces of sausage mixed with mashed potatoes and Stephen anticipated whole individual sausages…the reality was a large piece of sausagemeat, topped with mashed potatoes. The sausagemeat was under-seasoned and there were too many textures and flavours going on. Crunchy pastry with poppy seeds running through it, bouncy sausagemeat, cabbage and onions in the mustard mashed potatoes which were both dry and wet at the same time and also crunchy on top.
We both still think it’s a good idea and are keen to try and create our own version so watch this space 🙂
