Dinner at Friends
Last night, we went to visit friends for dinner and enjoyed a veritable feast.
We started with prawn crackers, accompanied by some rather good Champagne:
Then came the spring rolls which were filled with (if I remember correctly) pak choi, bean sprouts, rice vermicelli and mushrooms:
Then came the main courses, which included…
Scallops with asparagus:
Squid:
Salt baked sea bass, which was succulent:
We had some relish (iirc, ginger, chilli, garlic and spring onion) which went very well with the fish and I rather enjoyed adding it to everything else too:
All in all, a delicious dinner.
Steak with Mushrooms and Onions
Last night, after a long week, we cooked steak with mushrooms and onions. The steak was a rather large rump steak from our local butcher that we pan fried and shared between the two of us. The mushrooms were a combination of some ordinary chestnut mushrooms and a selection of wild mushrooms, also fried with some salt and pepper; we had planned to include some thyme but forgot. We also roasted some onions in the oven on a high heat and left them in until they had gone crunchy. Just in the picture as well are some red pepper pieces that we also roasted. We also had some green beans but they didn’t make it into the picture.
Jerusalem Artichokes with Green Beans and Hazelnuts
We had some jerusalem artichokes left over from the weekend and decided to use them up this week. A few years ago, in a gastropub, I had a salad that contained green beans, jerusalem artichokes and hazelnuts. It may have had something else in it too, but I couldn’t remember what it was so when it came to recreating it, there wasn’t anything else in it other than olive oil and seasoning. We peeled the jerusalem artichokes, then cut them up and roasted them in the oven for about 20 minutes. We roasted the hazelnuts with them to give them a bit more flavour and some crunch. The artichokes could have done with a little longer actually, as some of them were a little crunchy still.
We had this with lamb loin chops. The combination was very good indeed. The flavours of the salad ingredients went well together, and all of the salad ingredients went well with the slightly salty, slightly garlicky lamb. We are now planning to stuff lamb with hazelnuts.
Black and White Tuna
Actually, the tuna wasn’t black and white, it was brown (on the outside) and red (on the inside). It was the sesame seeds that were black and white. Friends of ours cooked something like this recently and it looked so good that we had to have a go too. They had a really brilliant plate to present it on though, so ours doesn’t look quite the same, but it tasted really good and we’ll try it again soon.
With this, I opened a bottle of Galpin Peak Pinot Noir “Tete de Cuve” 1999 from Bouchard Finlayson in Walker Bay, South Africa. I’ve had it on my wine rack for a few years and have been keeping it for a special occasion. I felt it would go with the tuna, so opened it tonight. It was brilliant. Elegant red fruits accompanied savoury notes, filling the mouth in the most smooth and wonderful way. A medium garnet colour, very slightly tawny but not as brownish as I thought it might be after almost nine years. I wish I had more bottles of this, but sadly this was the only one.
Stir Fried Beef and Basil
We haven’t posted for a few days as we were away over the weekend. When we got back, cooked roast beef but didn’t end up taking a picture of it because we were rather hungry and just started eating. Luckily we managed to restrain ourselves enough to leave some beef for a stir fry today.
We did a style of stir fry that we’ve had a few times recently: beef (or chicken) with chilli, garlic, soy sauce, fish sauce and basil. We added a number of vegetables to it today – baby corn, red pepper, orange pepper, spring onions and cavolo nero – and served it with a bit of jasmine rice. We used normal sweet basil rather than holy basil as the holy basil needs to be added a lot earlier if you’re using it and therefore you can’t use it if you forget. It turned out rather well, although the cavolo nero soaked up a lot of soy sauce and became rather salty.
Kippers
Tonight saw Stephen and I wandering aimlessly around the supermarket, tired, hungry and lacking in enthusiasm. That is until we happened upon these smoked kippers at the fish counter. We quickly decided we would take them home and have them with salad. Imagine our delight when we found they had been reduced and were only 39p for two!
Stephen heated them up in the oven and made a quick salad to go with them. They were delicious (if a little boney).
Guacamole, Salsa and Chicken Fajitas
The title says it all really. We made guacamole to our usual recipe (avocado, red onion, lime juice, chilli, coriander, garlic, salt and pepper) and served it with some toasted corn wraps.
We attempted to make salsa but it came out too watery (I caught Stephen drinking it when he thought I wasn’t looking) although tasty.
Finally (after marinating the chicken in lime juice, chilli, coriander and ginger for about half an hour) we fried it and then removed it from the pan. In went the red onions and peppers before combining the whole lot and serving with more corn wraps.
Tasty.
Steamed Fish
Stephen cooked a lovely dinner this evening of steamed sea bream which he had marinated in garlic, ginger, minced shallot, oyster sauce and soy sauce. It was topped with ginger, chilli and spring onions and steamed for 20 minutes.
We served this with some steamed vegetables: cauliflower (not good), red pepper (ok), celery (surprisingly delicious) and baby corns (good, as usual) and jasmine rice.
Next time I’d like to try this with trout. And sliced garlic.
Roast Chicken, Stuffing and Roast Potatoes
Today we cooked a roast chicken, for five people. We bought a rather large chicken and cooked it upside down so that it wouldn’t dry out. We had intended to turn it over for the last twenty minutes, but forgot. So the result was that it was tasty and moist, but didn’t look very photogenic. Hence no picture since we have plenty of better roast chicken pictures in Dinner Diary already.
We made chestnut stuffing for the first time. Last night, we roasted some chestnuts and Kerri spent quite a while shelling them. Her nail varnish survived by the way, in case you were worried. We sweated some onion, then added the chestnuts, breadcrumbs, garlic, sage, lemon zest and juice and sausage meat. We cooked it separately from the chicken and it turned out well; crunchy on the outside and soft and gooey on the inside. I’ve never used lemon in stuffing before, but a Delia recipe mentioned it so we gave it a go; the result was good but I still found it a bit odd when I encountered a particularly lemony bit.
Roast potatoes turned out rather well and the picture does them justice. We also had roast parsnips, mashed butternut, steamed kale and steamed cauliflower. And gravy of course. Mmmmm gravy.
Pasta Puttanesca and Chestnuts (separately)
Tonight we wanted something quick and easy so we had pasta puttanesca, which has featured several times before on Dinner Diary, so not a particularly exciting picture. Tasty though.
Tomorrow we are going to make chestnut stuffing, so tonight we roasted some chestnuts. Tomorrow we’ll make them into stuffing. Mmmmmmm stuffing.
