Just a weekly bit of fun whereby I can natter about any culinary ‘inventions’, successes and disasters in the kitchen.
Sunday
… I don’t usually natter about breakfasts but I thought husbs Sunday breakfast deserved a special mention. We have a hearty brunch as it keeps us going until dinner at 19:00. He grills back bacon, sausage, and fresh tomatoes, and hard fries mushrooms. Eggs change, but this week it was fried too. He finishes it off with toasted seeded batch loaf, and is THE BEST BREAKFAST EVER!
So, to Sunday dinner… Roast chicken! The comfort food of Sunday dinners! I’d bought some new rosemary sea salt so I pestled that (it is sea salt AND rosemary in a jar, the first lot I got was rosemary infused sea salt that could be sprinkled) before rubbing it into the chicken with olive oil and black pepper. I did proper British roast potatoes as the main side. They were peeled chopped and parboiled, before being drained and steamed for a minute to dry the surface out. They then get a good shake in the colander to rough them up a little, and finally I gave them a fine coating of semolina mixed with garlic granules, and added them to a roasting dish with a little oil. They just needed a turn every so often, to alight from the oven perfectly crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside. I served these two stars with broccoli with chilli flakes and lemon, bread sauce, cranberry sauce and delicious gravy.
Monday
… cream crackered… because, Monday. I used leftover roast chicken and broccoli, and red and yellow pepper, and onion, and cobbled together a pasta bake, bringing the fusilli and the rest of the ingredients together with a quick cheese sauce (heat milk and water, when nearly boiling add cornflour slaked with a little water, whisk, bring to boil, let thicken, let cook on low for a while, season, add grated cheese, done) before topping with cheesy panko breadcrumbs and sticking under the grill to brown.
Tuesday
We had a take-away. I had a weird combo, due to the fact that chips aren’t my favourite thing and we were going to the chip shop! Bare with me… I had ‘curried rice’, which is plain boiled rice with Chinese curry sauce (our chip shop is a Chinese take-away too), and finished it off with a fishcake. Not the most glamorous meal but better than chips imho. C had a cheese pie, chips, and one of my home pickled eggs.
Wednesday
… I was supposed to be making gobblers pie (déjà vu-ish I know, see last week) and I actually started, but I couldn’t bring myself to peel, chop, boil and mash the ten kilos of potatoes I would need to feed WedJ. I just decided to wing it. I browned the ground turkey, then sautéed leek and onion, and garlic, then red pepper. I finally added chicken stock, oregano, and a can of cannellini beans, for a reason I’ve forgotten, before cooking it for a while on the hob. I served this concoction that turned out to be delicious, with… basmati rice!
Thursday
… I started dinner very late because friends visited, so instead of the planned stuffed zucchini I did egg and chips! “Egg and chips?!” You say? Husb LOVES egg and chips, I do too actually, and we rarely eat it. I used oven chips and fried the eggs. Simple! The only thing that was missing for me was some cheap sliced white bread to make a chip buttie!
Friday
… We had egg and chips again! Well… Not really. I made ‘Bacalhau á Bras’, which is salt cod, potato and eggs. I had bought the salt cod when I shopped at the ‘all over the world’ online food shop a month or so ago, specifically for this dish. I started soaking the salt cod on Thursday afternoon, changing the water regularly. Then on Friday I got out the scariest contraption in the kitchen, the mandolin, and cut straw potatoes which I soaked in water to remove some starch and keep fresh until I wanted to fry them. I took a little salt cod and fried it off to taste for salt and there was nothing, I actually worried the end result may be under seasoned. Anyway, I fried the straw cut chips and drained them, then sauteed the onion and garlic. I nuked the salt cod for a few minutes to par cook it so I could flake it and remove bones, then I added it to the onion and cooked it out for a while. When I was ready to serve I added the eggs to the onion and scrambled them lightly before folding in the chips. I served it with green olives (they were supposed to be black but I didn’t have black) and extra still crispy straw cut chips. Next time I will start soaking two days before and poach the cod first, and also try it properly, the dish was far too salty for me. The recipe I sort of followed said to try from the middle of the fish to test, I took from the end as it was uncooked. I will definitely make it again though, it’s promising!
Saturday
… We had shop bought frozen pizza. I had a very thin one with salami and chillies, C bought a four cheese pizza and added loads of prawns to his. His was MUCH better than mine!
The More You Think... 