march 2010

Waldorf salad

with a little stilton crumbled in

Lambs kidneys in cream, cabbage with caramelised onions, caraway, barberries; linguine

Watercress and creme fraiche tart, round lettuce, new potatoes

Quince and cream

the last of our quinces. We're afraid the tree has had it.

Celery and potato soup

WR Oxtail; green beans; mashed potato

Meatballs, red peppers, paprika, chilli; courgettes, linguine

Poached pears, chocolate chilli fudge sauce, amaretti

Mackerel on toast, pickled pear, lettuce

Confit of duck, new potatoes, salad

Lunch: spag, squash, stilton

Dinner: Navah, Mark, Jo, Will

hooray, we're back in the business of cooking for friends again

Pumpkin, saffron, orange soup

from a Sainsburys xmas recipe special. I did toasted seeds with chilli with way too much chilli. The atmosphere in the kitchen was pretty dangerous. And we did warn people, but...

Roast chicken with Ras; peppers and courgettes with cumin, couscous with preserved lemon an toasted pine kernels

The chicken was dead easy - dredge tons of Ras all over it and roast. I thought I'd done a huge amount of veg but it vanished fast.

Banana and chocolate bread pudding, honey ice cream, caramelised bananas

This was adapted from the recipe in David Everitt-Matthais' Dessert book. His bread pudding is a rich custard with relatively little bread. The amount of cream was a little too scary for us, so I used milk, and more bread, making it more of a trad bread pudding. But we are cyclists after all.

The ice cream was 10floz single cream, 2 large eggs, 2 large tbs honey. I cooked the custard to about 63deg.C, and it gets pretty thick. In the churner it stayed quite liquid, I decanted it into a container and left it in the freezer, where I think it got to the right sort of texture.

Denhay cheddar, Swaledale goats, WR cornish brie, Epoisses

The Epoisses is what remanied of the stuff Colin bought to take into work. Apparently his colleagues had not noticed.

Lunch: Escabeche of carrots and onion, couscous, hummus

There were 3 carrots in the fridge, and I wanted something interesting to do to them. This wasn't wine-friendly, which Colin says is a good thing for after a boozy meal the night before

Dinner: M+S chorizo soup

Curried gratin of celeriac and potato, salad

Chicken in ras, spag; savoy cabbage with ginger, garlic, chilli

Chocolate brownie, red fruits, cream

Ate out

Thai Bistro, a new place

Trout, Sri Lanka curry spices; savoy with mustard and coconut; rice

I had been browsing the Charmaine Solomon book and half-followed some recipes

Caramelised pumpkin, poppyseeds, cream

Simon, Dinah, Amelia

Pumpkin soup with ras

Beef Bourgignon, linguine

Yoghurt, lemon, sesame cake; poached figs, yoghurt

cheeses including Yorkshire Blue

Meatballs, blue cheese sauce, sugar snaps, new potatoes

Cake etc as yesterday

Lunch: Ate out

Four Seasons, Powick, with Mum, Jonathan and family

Dinner: Leeks with olive oil, thyme etc; potatoes

Lunch: Thai salad

Colin went cycling and ate out, but I am only up to 2 hours ride

Dinner: salad of watercress, orange, fennel

Borscht with cream

Broccoli with anchovy mayo

Pizza-like thing with chard, barberries, feta

Last weekend we finally exchanged Christmas prezzies with Jonathan, he had got us a pizza stone. But it's a little big for the oven and only just fits. I had forgotten how to do pizza. I made dough yesterday, making it with a lot of water. This would make it rise well, but you can't roll it out flat so I was trying to dunk it onto the stone and squash it flat which didn't work. I had a whole chard plant and precooked that with onions and barberries, slice it up and cook. It's quite a lot for a "pizza" topping. It turned out nice enough but I suppose the middle of the dough was not so well cooked.

Aubergine with red pesto

WR moussaka

Tracey ate out, work jolly

NCG kedgeree soup

Chicken, chorizo, red peppers, tomatoes, chilli, potatoes, rocket

Sardines with lemon, fennel, roasted peppers

Sardines from a tin, fennel from Sunday, peppers from WR antipasti

Chicken in saffron and stock; broccoli, fried courgettes with preserved lemon, couscous

Lentil and squash soup

Black beans with mole, salad of tomato, mint, cilantro, lime, avocado oil; quinoa

Lunch: spag with peas, shallot, cream, basil

Dinner: Peter and Mhairi

Aubergine slices with barberry-walnut-bulghar-allspice-thyme; mint tabbouleh

something of a Persian-Lebanese hybrid. Nowruz baraka, by the way.

Roast pork loin, butter beans with mushroom, porcini, truffoil; savoy cabbage with onion and juniper; potatoes

Ginger parkin with ginger ice cream

the parkin recipe was from here I cooked it an hour on gas 3 in a large loaf tin. For the ice cream, 5floz cream and 1 large egg and some preserved ginger in syrup, and the syrup.

Ardrahan, Keen's cheddar, Gorwydd Caerphilly

Lunch: a sort of salad of potatoes, mackerel, mint, spring onions, with horseradish in cream and yoghurt

I had bought a whole horseradish root from not-Robert-Young and grated about 2 cm off the end, fairly tame amount. This "recipe" is very good - the mint and sprig onions work well

Dinner: walnut and pomegrate kibbeh, coriander salsa

No idea what I was trying to do. I'd had kibbeh at Brosh, and they know what to do there. I had some leftover bulghar so I mixed most of that with toasted walnuts and some pom syrup and garlic shallot cumin. Then pureed 2 tbs of the bulghar in the old coffee grinder to make soething to stick it all together with. Make into 4 flat cakes and fry. It kinda works, it was a bit fragile.

Pork etc leftovers, bubble and squeak.

risotto with mushrooms prawns, fizz, peas; courgettes

pears in red wine, cream, amaretti

WR mushroom gratins

WR Bouillabaise, bread, spinach

Ate out

Storyteller, with John

Mackerel with fresh horseradish; sping onions, mint, lime juice, toast

Pork, onions, mushrooms, spinach, stock, cream; potatoes

Leftover special, but actually rather nice

John and Val

Goats cheese souffles, watercress salad

Delia Smith classic recipe. Did the first cooking last night but we weren't sure they were set after 15 mins, gave them 25-30 mins. The only 15-20 tonight.

Leg of lamb slow roasted with herbs and black olives, ratatouille, flageolets, ne wpotatoes

We had a Guigal St Joseph, really gorgeous

Prune and honey cake, pressed apple terrine, apricot kernel ice cream

more or less the recipe from Dessert. I did half quantities of the cake but it is still quite a lot.

Tunworth, red Leicester, Petit Basque

Lunch: ratatouille and bulghar

Dinner: Lamb, beans, cauli in ras carmel, couscous

Parkin, with the apple terrine

Lunch: Ate out

Pear Tree at Whitley, with all the Champions

Dinner: curried mackerel fishcakes, salad

Mushroom soup

Salad with red peppers, aubergine slices, Tunworth, polenta slices fried

Lamb curry, flower sprouts with coconut and chilli, rice

Lamb leftovers. The flower sprouts are like teeny open cabbages and taste like cabbage.

I had some blanched radish leaves, because I had bought some radishes because they looked so fresh and the leaves so green. They are a bit coarse and bitter but ok.

Chestnut cake and cream

Lamb-couscous "kibbeh":, fried; blanched cabbage with dried tomatoes, walnuts, shallot; pitta

Creative use of the last of the lamb leg. Chopped finely with 3 tbs couscouus and spices, then blended with some water and gram flour to make a dough. Form into balls, dust with flour and fry. The whole thing ended up being a bit reminiscent of lamb kebabs from a takeaway - in a nice way.

Parkin, cream-yog-ginger