Salt Marsh Lamb
Today we returned from a weekend in Suffolk where I played cricket (and we won!) and on the way back to London, dropped in at The Food Company at Marks Tey. There we picked up half a leg of salt marsh lamb (amongst other things) and cooked it when we got home.
Kerri spiked the lamb with garlic slivers and rosemary leaves and we had it with some sauteed potatoes, runner beans and purple sprouting brocolli. Usually we have roast chicken when we come back from being away, but we didn’t go that far this time and weren’t away for very long. And besides, we had the excellent salt marsh lamb.
The lamb was very tasty, fully flavoured and succullent despite the fact that I think I left it in for slightly too long. Every time we have it, I think that we should never have any other sort of lamb again. There is loads left over for lunch too!
Prawn and Squid Stir-fry
Having decided that stir fries can be a tasty and quick way to comply with our healthy eating regime, we tried another one tonight. This was a Thai style stir fry with prawn and squid. We added vegetables (yellow pepper, baby corn and mange tout) to an existing recipe. The recipe called for insane amounts of chilli, so we toned it down a bit. Here is an ammended version:
8 raw prawn tails
4 smallish squid
half a red or yellow pepper, cut into thin slices
a handful of mange tout
a handful of baby corn split vertically
2 birds eye chillies, seeded and chopped
2 shallots, chopped
1 stalk lemongrass, chopped
2cm or so ginger, grated
1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
1/4 cup chicken stock
vegetable oil for frying
Pound the shallots and lemongrass in a mortar and pestle until almost paste-like (or use a food processor!). Add the ginger and pound a bit more to combine.
Heat a wok and add the oil. Fry the paste and the chilli for a few minutes until aromatic. Add the vegetables and stir fry them for a bit, then add the chicken stock and stir some more. Turn down the heat and put a lid on the wok for a few minutes until the vegetables have softened a bit.
Turn the heat back up and add the prawns and squid. Stir fry for a few minutes until they are done. Add the lime juice and fish sauce, then stir and turn off the heat.
Serve with jasmine rice.
Bulgaria
So Bulgarian food..we weren’t sure what to expect really but thought it might be a little like Greek food. I suppose it was really, lots of grilled meat and salad. Lots of salad. Salad which is basically big chunks of tomato, cucumber and celery with grated white cheese on top, an olive and a sprig of basil. Sometimes there were slices of pepper too. We were offered this everywhere we went so it’s obviously a local speciality. The cheese is a little like Feta but firmer and saltier.
Below is a selection of food we ate at the wedding we attended, starting with salad (obviously!)
This was more salad, attractively arranged to look like a fish:
Selection of dried meats:
And Stephen’s plate of food which included some grilled meats, some potaotes and a stuffed vine leaf:
And some of the cocktails we enjoyed.
Europe (I can’t remember what was in this but it was the barman’s own creation and consisted almost entirely of alcohol….we had to let all the ice melt and top it up with water before we could drink it)
Little Planet which contained a whole orange!
Sadly there are no pictures of the Bulgarian Mojito which uses sage instead of mint 🙁
Finally, some Turkish Delight we bought from the supermarket:
Chicken Salad
Not very imaginative but a good way to use up the leftover chicken on a warm day. This salad was made particlarly good by the adition of a perfectly ripe avocado and a simple dressing of lemon, oil and Dijon mustard. I forgot to buy carrots though and Stephen took the yellow pepper for the version of this he made at work, otherwise it was perfect 🙂
Roast Chicken
We’re just back from a long weekend in Bulgaria, so what was the first thing we decided to eat? Roast chicken of course, it’s tradition now 🙂
We ate some interesting food in Bulgaria, mostly grilled meats and chunky salads. We’ll post some pictures when I can find the camera lead.
The roast chicken was exactly what we needed, quick, easy and tasty. We served it with some rosemary roasted potatoes and some lemony leeks.
The only difficult thing about roast chicken is that we eat it so often that it’s difficult to make it look interesting, this was my best effort after three hours on a plane.
G
Fishcakes
We made these fishcakes on Sunday and froze them; 20 minutes in the oven when we got home tonight and they were done.
We roasted the salmon in the oven with some garlic and baked a large potato. Once cooked, flake the salmon and mash the potatoes with butter and seasoning, combine with some briefly steamed spinach, parsley and season again if needed. Form into cake shapes and freeze…or cook, obviously.
We served these with steamed vegetables and some horseradish. The horseradish would have worked well stirred into the mashed potatoes before the cakes were formed too.
These are definitely the best fishcakes we’ve ever made and we think it’s probably because we roasted the salmon instead of poaching it in milk. It could also be because we baked the potato instead of steaming it – I’ve read a lot about how this makes the best mashed potato but I haven’t tasted it on it’s own (well, I did “test” the potato while I was making the cakes) so am not sure about that yet. I guess we’ll have to have mashed potatoes again soon 🙂
Barbecued Steak
Kerri suggested that as the weather was good today, we should barbecue this evening. A good idea it was too, but I think the weather disagreed with us and it started clouding over. It was still good enough to barbecue when the time came though.
We’re on a health kick at the moment and I know barbecue doesn’t sound like the healthiest option, but we kept it simple: steak and salad and half a corn cob each. We were famished and ended up steaming the corn while the barbecue heated up and ate it as a starter. It didn’t have that delicious barbecue-corn flavour, but it was tasty anyway and we were too hungry to care.
Then came the steak. A couple of sirloin steaks on the barbecue for a few minutes on each side. The edge of one was looking rather underdone after this so I put them back on for a few more minutes and ended up overcooking them a bit, but it didn’t matter much as they were still really tender and tasty. The steaks were from Marks and Spencer; usually I don’t buy much in the way of food there because so much of it is packaged in ways that irritate me, but as it turns out their steaks were particularly good.
We’re both dying for a glass of wine now after all of that, but that’s not compliant with the health regime sadly.
Stir Fried Vegetables with Roasted Salmon
Does this look familiar at all? If it does it’ll be because this is basically the same as last night’s dinner, except with salmon instead of chicken. I roasted the salmon in the oven with some garlic, chilli and ginger and stir fried the vegetables seperately in the same sauce of oyster sauce, soy sauce and rice wine vinegar. I used more oyster and soy too.
The other difference is I cooked this myself whereas Stephen normally does the stir frying. This is actually the first time I’ve stir fried anything and I think I did ok. My onions were probably overcooked and things may have gone a bit too brown but the vegetables stayed crunchy and it tasted good.
G
Stir Fried Chicken
It’s another healthy eating week for us, we’re going on holiday on Friday and expect to be eating and drinking too much so this is a sort of pre-emptive strike.
We decided on a carb-light dinner of stir fried chicken which was really tasty, and quick too which is key…if we don’t eat soon after we get home then we find ourselves picking at things before we sit down to eat.
Chicken, onions, garlic, ginger, mange-tout, baby corn, red pepper, mushrooms, purple brocolli and beansprouts were the basis; with a sauce of soy sauce, rice wine and oyster sauce thrown over at the end before cooking for a few more minutes.
Carb light, but probably improved with just a small portion of rice to soak up the tasty juices.
Barbecue
I think summer has arrived. I could be wrong but in the interests of making the most of it while it lasts, Stephen and I barbecued yesterday. We’d been talking to a friend on Friday night about how good barbecued mackerel is so decided to have that, along with some bream.
We also had corn, samphire, baked potatoes (with garlic butter), salad, harissa roasted tomatoes and some interesting wine. It was all really good, the samphire obviously went well with the fish but the harissa roasted tomatoes went briliiantly too. I’m not a big fan of the tomato but could happily eat loads of these.
Here are some of the more interesting pictures we took:
