Beef Stirfry
We had a fair amount of beef left over from our roast yesterday, so we decided to make it into a stir fry. Nothing too fancy – just a made up, pseudo-Thai recipe using thinly sliced beef, red pepper, carrot, baby corn and broccoli to which we added chilli, lemongrass, garlic, lime juice, soy sauce and fish sauce in varying quantities. Served with jasmine rice as usual.
Cobnuts
Stephen went to the Hammersmith Farmer’s Market on Thursday and came back with cobnuts! We were both really excited by this as we’d read a lot about them but never seen them before. They’re a bit like hazelnuts and grow mostly in Kent.
I was worried they were destined for the same fate as the onion squash and the chestnuts (both purchased by Stephen and left to languish at the back of the vegetable bowl before they went rotten and I had to dispose of them) but he spent much of the morning researching recipes and found this for ginger and cobnut cake. It’s raining again today and we both thought this sounded perfect for a rainy Sunday afteroon.
Before baking the cake, the cobnuts need to be shelled and roasted in the oven. The nuts puff up during roasting and become sweeter.
We didn’t have enough nuts to make a whole cake so made a smaller one and baked it in the oven for about 20 minutes, then we left it to cool while we got on with roasting our beef.
The cake actually turned out more like a biscuit, it was very dense in texture and flat too. We didn’t have self raising flour and had to improvise with baking powder which may have had something to do with it. It was tasty though, and we had it with custard which I love.
Roast Beef
Did I mention it was raining again today? We started talking about what to have for lunch before breakfast and it took us about 10 seconds to decide on roast beef. Stephen braved the weather to go in search of beef (well, go to the shop…it’s not like we live on a rambling country estate after all) and came back with some topside (the best cut for roasting according to the seller) and a selection of vegetables, all from the local Farmer’s Market.
According to the blog archive, we haven’t had proper roast beef and yourshire puddings since new year’s eve! Seeing as this is one of our favourites it’s a good job we rectified this today.
The beef was sprinkled with a little flour and mustard powder (a Delia tip) and lots of black pepper before being roasted on an onion (another Delia tip I think, it’s a similar technique to using a rack and means the meat doesn’t sit in a lot of fat; it also makes for great gravy) for about 40 minutes. We use a meat thermometer to ensure the meat is cooked the way we like it: pink.
Plenty of roast potaoes and, of course, yorkshire pudding, with lots of Stephen’s brilliant gravy definitely livened up a grey, wintery day.
Barbecue
Yesterday, we went to a friend’s barbecue. We’d been keeping our fingers crossed all week that the weather was going to co-operate and we were lucky, apart from a few spots of rain just as the food went on the grill, it stayed dry.
Darren is famous for his guacamole, and he didn’t let us down yesterday having made a huge bowl full of the avocadoey, garlicy green stuff for us to dip our chips and pitta into.
We took along some more of the tapenade we made on Thursday but this time it was a bit too salty. Not sure why. It got eaten though so it can’t have been too bad.
Then we ate some really fresh mackerel that had marinated in some cumin, coriander, chilli and pepper and stuffed with lime and some chicken legs that were coated in honey and mustard.
Finally, we ate a brilliant homemade greengage cake bought along by another friend of ours. Served with custard, it was sweet and sticky and a perfect way to finish off the day.
Tart’s Tagliatelle
We had various ideas about what to make tonight but ended up deciding that something relatively simple would be good. So we decided on pasta puttanesca. We’ve made this before with spaghetti, but we had somehow run out of spaghetti so had it with tagliatelle instead, which went really well. The sauce was just the right strength for the amount of pasta we had. What little sauce was left in the saucepan, we ended up eating on breadsticks because we enjoyed it so much.
La Perla
After we went to the market last night we had planned to go to Wahaca for dinner.  Stupidly, we didn’t book and as it’s only just opened it was busy. All was not lost though as we ended up just up the road at La Perla We had to wait a while for our table but when we soon forgot the wait when we started to eat.
Between the five of us we had a selection of prawns, chorizo, jalapeno peppers and pork belly to start. This was followed by fajitas, burritos, enchiladas and red snapper. All washed down by Pacifico beer and vanilla and pear tequila.
As we were wandering around Covent Garden we realised just how many great restaurants there are that we still haven’t been to, we decided we’d make more of an effort to head into town for dinner. Next week we’re going to book Wahaca. I wonder if the chef is as good at making fajitas as this guy?
Fantastic Four
Richard from Superfood has tagged us to answer the Fantastic Four meme. This posed a bit of a problem because there are two of us so, we decided we’d give two answers each per question. There were initially five questions which seemed at odds with the whole Four thing so we’ve left one out.
Four places you’ve lived
G: I was born in Kent and lived there until I was 18 and ran away to London to go to University, I went back home to live for a little while after I graduated but soon came running back to London.
G: Stephen and I now live in South West London having moved here from North London just under a year ago. We live within walking distance of a great butcher, deli and fishmonger now.
F: I was born in Cape Town in South Africa and lived there for 25 years, until I moved to London. I enjoy going back on holiday and love the range of fish and seafood available there.
F: Shepherd’s Bush… lived there for a couple of years. Interesting for its range of Middle Eastern supermarkets.  Other than that, it wasn’t hugely interesting food-wise apart from a northern Thai restaurant that served really good food but usually took ages and eventually I gave up going there.
Four places you’ve been on holiday
G: I went to South Africa with Stephen last year and had a brilliant time. It was hot and the food was great, really fresh and tasty.
G: We went to Barcelona earlier in the year and ate some amazing food, and drank some great wine too 🙂
F: Hmm since Kerri went first, she’s stolen some recent joint holidays, I’ll have to take the others.  Luckily for me we’ve posted about these visits so I’ll just link them:
Four favourite foods
G: This is difficult, my favourite food change all the time but I’d say fresh bread with oil or unsalted butter and chocolate always feature. Not particularly exotic!
F: Thai Jungle Curry. I used to love jungle curry but haven’t had it for a while so would probably find it too hot to taste now. I’ll have to embark on a chilli-eating regime to train myself.
F: Roast Chicken and stuffing and roast potatoes and gravy and vegetables, preferably green leafy ones.  Quite a comfort food type meal for me. We often have it on our first night back at home after being away on holiday.
F: Cheese.  Of many varieties, especially aged soft cheeses.Â
Four places you’d rather be
G: Somewhere hot. We’ve not had great weather this summer and I really miss the sunshine and the barbecue opportunities.
G: Lying in bed, drinking tea and eating toast while watching Saturday Kitchen and planning food to eat for the weekend.
F: In Kalk Bay in Cape Town eating Snoek (hmm maybe that should have been one of my favourite foods…)
F: At Borough Market, shopping on an empty stomach (dangerous I know, but fun)
I tag:
Covent Garden Night Market
Both Stephen and I were really excited to read about this and went along last night to check it out. There were of course the predictable hordes of people and tourists but this didn’t put us off, we both used to work there until very recently so were used to this. What was really disappointing though was the lack of stalls. I’d read in various publications that there were 60 something stalls there but last night there were maybe 10-15. Not sure if this is because there was also a Children’s Week event happening but it was a shame, these stalls were all squashed into one small section of the market too making it even more over-crowded.
There were different stalls to those at Borough Market which was good and we did manage to find some uncooked chorizo which, oddly, we struggle to find but otherwise, I’m not sure if I’d go rushing back.
Chicken Stuffed with Tapenade and Sundried Tomatoes
Tonight we made our own tapenade and used it to stuff chicken breasts. We added some plump, juicy sundried tomatoes to counteract the strong flavours of the tapenade and then baked the chicken in the oven. Served with some new potatoes and our usual vegetables for this time of year – runner beans and purple sprouting brocolli.
My timing was a bit out when cooking and we had to put the potatoes back on because I’d taken them off too early. They still turned out strangely; they were a lot waxier than we’d thought they would be. Also, the chicken breasts were touching each other in the dish and so were underdone where they touched and had to be put back in for a while longer. Looking at the picture though, it all looks slightly pink still… hopefully that’s just a trick of the light or we might be feeling ill soon!
All that aside, they tasted really good and we started thinking of other things to cook with tapenade soon as we only used half of it.
Crab Spaghetti
We bought a dressed crab yesterday at the same shop we bought the lamb and, not really knowing what to do with it, used it for crab spaghetti. We’ve done this a couple of times before with tinned crab and it’s tasty, quick and easy to throw together with just a few store-cupboard essentials (garlic, chilli, oil, crab, lemon juice, some green stuff and spaghetti). We were interested to try it with fresh crab to see how it compared.
The result? I think the version with the tinned crab wins. This was just a bit soggy and tasteless really, almost a waste of good spaghetti. Not sure if the crab wasn’t very good or if something went wrong in the cooking / assembling process.
