Caesar salad, barbeque and more springtime sunshine!

I can hardly believe that we are still in this lovely sunny, hot springtime. It’s just gorgeous. I am trying to take it one day at a time but the more we have of summertime the more I know I will be disappointed when it returns to spring.

My sister came up to stay this weekend. So Friday was food shopping – butchers for a shoulder of lamb & ribs for the barbeque, the freezer for other barbeque fair – quails & chicken breast, Waitrose for the rest. Woke up Saturday morning remembering I hadn’t planned lunch.  Opps! What have I got?? Just about enough for a Caesar salad – Cos lettuce, eggs, parmesan & anchovies. Tiger bread that hubby had bought and bacon out of the freezer for breakfast – fab. I love Caesar salad – creamy salty dressing on crisp leaves with a little crunch from croutons & bacon –perfect.

We had just about got the barbeque cooked – spatchcock quail in mustard marinade, chicken skewers in tandoori style marinade & ribs – when the thunder storm that had been brewing all afternoon sent down the rain. We all dashed inside to eat. A real summertime BBQ – and it’s April. Green bean & tomato salad, corn on the cob & potato salad to balance out the meat.

Sunday was citrus fruit salad & hot cross buns for breakfast. Aqua class to work some of it off. And home to a slow roast shoulder of lamb, with pepper / feta salad (using the last of the BBQ heat yesterday to blacken the peppers), first of the jersey royals & peas. Easy peasy, but just delicious and summery enough for the day.

We finished off – much later in the day – with Heston’s cherry chocolate trifle for dessert. I’d forgotten I was making this, even though I bought the sponge fingers and cherries weeks ago. So had to improvise in the Co-op local with raspberry jelly & Ambrosia tinned custard instead of gelatine & fresh custard. Well, it seemed to make no difference, the finished trifle was delicious – amaretto, cherries, chocolate, cream – what can go wrong with that combination. Made them in individual glasses using ½ the recipe. It was just enough for three would have been a mean four. More sponge fingers needed.

Today we have polished off the last of the lamb with hummus, flat bread and salad. A suppertime picnic to finish a summertime in spring Easter weekend.

Salads in springtime

The weather has been glorious. Feels like summer and I find that I’m getting used to it, not quite sunbathing in the garden, but almost. It’ll be a shock next week when it turns back to spring. So food has taken on a summer feel this weekend. Salad Nicoise last night, which is definitely one of my summer favourites, but not usually served in spring! It’s a lovely summer supper – tuna steaks, eggs, green beans & olives – yum. We had lettuce & tomatoes in the box this week. The tomatoes were a little insipid, so I slow roasted them to intensify their flavours. Cut in half, sprinkle with s&p, sugar, oregano and little rapeseed oil, then into oven at 120 for four hours and leave to cool before adding to salad.  Scrummy.

Also put the meat into marinade for the barbecue today. I know April 10^th and we are having a barbie, the first of the year! The weather really is gorgeous. So chicken thighs have gone into a marinade of preserved lemon, chilli, rosemary & garlic and lamb chops have been rubbed with ras-al-hanout spices. We’ve got loads of parsley in the garden, so I’ll do a herby couscous salad and then hubby’s got aubergine, peppers & mushroom for the barbecue. Makes a lovely change from a Sunday roast and we might even get to eat it outside. We had breakfast on the garden bench this morning – citrus fruit salad with yoghurt, honey and seeds. Then bread and marmalade. I’ve got back into my bread making mode. Made the dough up last night, left it rise, second rise this morning and then into the oven and ready for breakfast. This only really works for breakfast on a Sunday, which is late, late morning. Any other day and it’s a loaf for lunch. Still lovely, lovely to have fresh bread. Need to find a way to keep it through the week, it goes so dry. I’ve tried paper bags and plastic bags. Today I’ve put it in a biscuit tin, that might just work. Don’t know why I’ve not tried it before. Put a bit of milk into the mix this time, thinking that might keep it softer, we will see.

Cheering on cauliflower

Started the week or rather ended the weekend with cauliflower cheese. I think I’m going to start a one women revival of this unloved veg – even Rose Prince, whose view I value highly, was having a pop at it in the paper this weekend.  I love it and following a sunny spring walk in Osterley on Saturday, we picked up a beautiful creamy head of cauliflower and some home grown rhubarb in the estate farm shop. The rhubarb went into crumble yesterday and the cauliflower into cauliflower cheese this evening. Just undercooking it I think is the key to this, so there is still a little texture, but it leads into creaminess when it meets cheesy sauce. Just lovely.

The butcher played his part in the rest of the food we feasted on this weekend. They were my source for a blade of pork for lunch yesterday. This is a shoulder joint with the blade bone still in, allowing it to slowly roast in the oven, while I went to aqua and hubby gardened. The big advantage of a pork joint from the butcher’s is the crackling – the meat has been hung up rather than wrapped up, so the skin in is dryer and that makes for better crackling – crunchy with a layer of fat underneath – I know deadly, but I can think of worse ways to eat fat – greasy burger / Indian take away anyone?  Creating this crackling is almost impossible with a joint that has been sitting in plastic in a supermarket fridge. It does raise the ongoing dilemma though. My local (well localish) butchers is very work-a-day, so no organically reared pork here – his local customers just won’t pay for it. He does have English pork though. So do I support a local butcher and the English pig farmers or organic pig farming generally? I try and get a balance of both, that works for me, my conscience and my palate.

Anyway, on Friday the butcher also had venison, guinea fowl, and duck legs – what was going on? This is very unusual fare for them – getting a free range chicken is an occasional delight. What’s with the venison haunch? Well, they have started to supply TVU and the catering courses are using more ‘trendy’ (the butcher’s word, not mine) ingredients and the services of some well known chefs, so these products are beginning to show up on their counter. Great news for me! Especially as on Friday morning as hubby left for work he let out a pitiful ‘don’t know what I’m going to do for supper tonight’ accompanied by a hang dog expression. It was his turn you see. But how can I resist helping him out? And a guinea fowl at the butchers was just the answer. We were going to have a spit roast chick from Waitrose, which would probably have been one from Tesco, as hubby’s route home is changing – and I really couldn’t bear that either. It’s no great hardship to pop a chicken in the oven and roast it myself – so one guinea fowl for me.

As it was I spatchcocked it and put it in a piri-piri marinade – chilli, lime, cumin, ginger and coriander and a quick roast – 45 mins at 200. Oven chips and salad – delicious Friday night fare! We gobbled it all up. You can see why we had cauli tonight!

We did have fish on Saturday too, so it’s not been a complete meat feast. Hubby did sea bream with Thai spicing a la Nigel Slater. Served it with fried potatoes – not sure that worked. Ah well.

 

Sunday, sunshine and sea bream

Sitting in the sunshine on the bench at the back of the garden, with a cup of tea and a couple of cookery books – Rose Prince and Hugh, were the choice today. Some say that a good life is one lived by a series of simple pleasures, well this morning that was a simple pleasure of mine to add to a life well lived.

Once again food is on my mind. I’ve got from friends staying over in the week soon, so have been thinking about what to cook for us that makes a nice after work supper.  Plus they have some lovely fresh sea bream on the counter at Sainsbury’s the other day. So tried out a Jamie 30 minute meal last night that may fit the bill for both – sea bream and tasty after work supper. Crispy sea bream (his version was sea bass) with sweet potato mash and Asian greens, with a berry ice-cream to follow. So what I love about Jamie is his twist and re-think on standard suppers e.g. cooking sweet potatoes in the microwave quickly rather than slowly roasting in the oven. Both have their place, depending on what you want to achieve – a quick supper or a slow supper. So tried his way in the microwave last night – only problem is I moved the microwave into the garage last year. I just don’t use it very much and it was taking up valuable kitchen space – ahhh one day a big kitchen will be mine.  So put Hubby on ‘runner’ microwave duty.  They were a bit ‘mealy’ in places,  next time I’ll cut then into smaller, more even chunks.

And the berry ice-cream was a breeze. What a great idea – whizzing up frozen berries, yoghurt and honey for instant ice-cream – fabulous. Will add a little more honey next time to sweeten it a bit more. Will definitely be making it again – maybe with some different fruit – Waitrose have some frozen mango I think – that would be lovely. Anyway supper was lovely and declared a hit by hubby, so I think it’s what I’ll be doing for the friends staying.

Got the sea bream fillets in the freezer and the bones for making fish stock in the fridge.

Roast lamb for lunch today – a leg for a change rather than our usual shoulder. So rather than a slow sticky roast we’ll be having a some pink lamb today. Hubby is downstairs now, stuffing it with anchovies, rosemary & garlic.  Thinking about left over’s too – shepherd’s pie, pilaf, or just slices of cold roast lamb – in a sandwich maybe. Mmmm yummy.

Catching up

So much to catch up on. The very reason I started this blog was to remember and record the lovely food we eat and already this week I’m forgetting what we ate on Monday!

So, was away suddenly last week to visit my Mum in hospital and came back to a fridge almost bare. Where to start? Well the lovely H.G.Walters for course. We were into town for lunch, so took the opportunity to go into Walters and buy some meat. Got a super joint of belly pork for Sunday, couple of poussins with star anise – curious about those, some free range quail and an Otter Valley duck. We had these for Christmas and they were just delicious. At this point Hubby’s saying ‘don’t go mad.’ It’s a good caution, because that butchers to me is what a sweetie shop is to many others.

Cooked the pork belly on Sunday. Rubbed some cracked coriander & fennel seeds into the crackling, along with s&p. Sizzle at 220 for ½ hour and then 1 ½ hrs at 180. The house smelt gorgeous. Remains of the box veg that hubby hadn’t eaten during the week – steamed greens and orange / butter carrots. Then some delicious lemon roast potatoes from the new Telegraph chef who’s doing the Saturday cooking piece now. Having said I wasn’t sure about him I now realise that I have cooked or been inspired by two of his recipes in the last couple of weeks. Anyway the potatoes were simple and a lovely alternative to roast and because I’d made the rosemary & garlic that was supposed to be for the pork chops in the recipe I added it into the potatoes so they were really delicious with the roast pork.

Peel & wedge 2-3 potatoes, into roasting dish/ tray. Add in chopped lemon, capers, celery leaves – and in this case rosemary & garlic crushed with salt to a paste. Cover with baking paper. Into oven 180 for an hour.

Slow cooking lamb

Spiced up the shoulder of lamb yesterday to slow cook in the oven while we were out. A rub of cumin, coriander, fennel, cinnamon, rosemary a la Hugh. Then in to sizzle at 220 for 30 mins and then down to 140 for five hours. Next time note – a glass of water means a glass of water – not a tumbler – there was far too much liquid in the tray when it was finished. I know this with lamb, need to learn it.

So the bit I need to work out is slow cooking times for a shoulder of lamb. There are different starting points – the sizzle, the browning or into a very hot oven & turn down immediately. Then there are the different temperatures and times for the slow, melting magic to happen. Because it really is magic how that joint of lamb melts and transforms into a unctuous, savoury, scooping dish to savour.

So starting points aside, as they all have their merits and basically the same effect – starting to create a savoury crust and get the joint going – slow times & temperatures are what I want to make a note of, so that that I can time better the cooking against the Sunday activity – walking, aqua, movie – without having to work it out each time.

Yesterday Hugh suggested 120 for six hours, I worked on 140 for 5 hours, and Jamie’s 170 for 4 hours. So it seems a 20 degree per hour increase or decrease – after whatever sizzle method I use. That makes sense – and quite frankly at the lower temperatures a 1/2 hour here or there doesn’t seem too crucial.

Made some aromatic rice – cardoman, cinnamon and bay – and kale to go with.

The left over rice made lovely ‘raid the fridge’ lunch today with a cold chipolata chopped in, a couple of ‘please eat me up’ slices of salami , the best bits I could salvage from a tired avocado and some fresh – oh yes, there was something fresh – watercress. Seasoned and dressed with little lemon juice, olive oil and some chopped olives.

Tonight it’s ‘made on purpose’ leftover lamb. Going to try it this time as a warm salad with pearl barley & kale. And I’ll whiz up some beetroot hummus for lunch-box lamb pitas tomorrow. The beetroot is from some I cooked for the beetroot risotto on Saturday. ‘A bit one dimensional’ said hubby – and he was right. Not sure that this is going on the list of favourites, although beetroot, is definitely staying on the favourites list and hubby’s going to grow it again next year. Hurrah!