Pub Lunch at King Eddie's

On Monday, my nephews and niece were in town.  Since there's just not enough room in our tiny flat for two crawling babies and one rambunctious toddler, we met them in our local pub, King Eddie's, for some top-notch pub munches.

King Eddie's is a brilliant place to have as a local, because they change their menu pretty frequently, meaning you can eat there regularly without getting bored.   Although I'm still mourning the disappearance of the amaaaazing venison burger they used to do.  It's been gone for about a year.   Oh 2010, I miss you.

This time I continued on the burger theme by opting for a bean version with skinny fries.

It came in a crusty granary roll and the burger was topped with melty goat's cheese.. Mmm yeah.  I can't comment on much else because the toddler hoovered up my chips before I'd had a chance to even admire them.  And the mayonnaise.  By the handful. 

Sunday Night Vietnamese at Namo

Going out for dinner on a Sunday night feels weirdly decadent. Sunday nights should be for washing your hair and making packed lunches, for ironing shirts and recharging your Blackberry. But instead of doing any of those things this week, we decided to go out for dinner! Yay us. We're crazy.

We headed out to Namo in Hackney, which is in the heart of too-cool-for-school Victoria Park village and a nice, longish walk from our house.  It was busy for a Sunday night, with nearly every table taken. 

There was beer. 

To start, I ordered my favourite of all Vietnamese dishes - summer rolls.  These came wrapped in rice paper and were stuffed with green herbs and fat prawns.  They were a touch on the under-seasoned side, but on the other hand you could really taste the freshness of the ingredients.  And they came with a lovely, dark, peanut-scattered bowl of dipping sauce.

To follow, I chose bun xa - which I don't know how to pronounce, but I do know how to eat.

Three out of the four of us ordered this dish, because it sounded so delicious on the menu.  And it didn't disappoint.  We each had a biggish bowl of thin, slippery rice noodles, topped with soft fried onions, lemongrass, meat, and chillies.  I chose chicken, which was perfectly cooked and tender.  B and Jonny went for chargrilled pork (a good call - for some reason, the pork came with some bonus mini spring rolls on top.  Jealous!).   I picked out the chillies, being a bit of a wuss about spiciness, but B manfully left them in.

Gail had a chicken and coconut curry, which she described as a bit like a Thai green curry.  It looked yummy.

At the end of the meal, they gave us some jelly beans wrapped in a twist of paper as a thank you.  I'm a sucker for little details like that.  Look at the cute label!

Happy Sunday everyone.  Let's be decadent more often. 

Saturday at the Seaside

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside, oh I do like to be beside the seeeeeeea! 

Ahem.  On Saturday, we decided to make the most of the sunny weather and went day-tripping to the coast.  I love being by the sea.  The sound of the waves, the tang of salt in the air, dangerous seagulls everywhere you turn....I love it all, but most of all I love the food.  Of course. 

http://www.rockanore.co.uk/

We bought a large crab for lunch:

Salut monsieur.  I like your parsley hat!

B has many culinary skills, but one of the best is his ability to take apart a crab.  He takes it very seriously, and can spend hours carefully picking out all the delicious meat from every nook and cranny.

My contribution is to set the table.  And to eat the crab, of course. 

We had a huge green salad with the crab, freshly baked bread, and a potato salad stuffed full of mint, chives, and parsley picked from the garden. 

For dinner, we smothered the lemon sole with a chive and parsley butter, then grilled them for about 5 or 6 minutes per side.  The butter kept the fish moist and it was deliciously flaky (bony too, though.  Lots of bones). 

We kept the sides simple and just had a watercress and spinach salad with cherry tomatoes.  Perfect for a summer's evening.

Come Dine With Me - The Brixton Edition

On Friday, it was the lovely Miss E's turn to host our circle of friends for dinner. The weather had decided to be kind to us, and it was warm enough to sit out in her beautiful garden and celebrate the end of the week with many glasses of wine. 

Fizzy wine, of course. It's not a party until that makes an appearance. 

E made two delicious dips from scratch - one with pesto and Parmesan, the other with salmon and cream cheese. Pretty, no? And sooo addictive. I must have eaten my body weight in dip-laden crisps.

For the main course, she made us posh fish and chips - monkfish wrapped in bacon, sweet potato chips, and lemon mayonnaise.   Monkfish is always delicious, and she'd snuggled some lemon and rosemary between the fish and the bacon wrapping, making the little parcels fragrant and yummy.   The recipe is via Jamie. 

The real show-stopper was the dessert. - an Amaretto and raspberry tart, with fresh fruit and creme fraiche on the side. We've been known to enjoy the odd Disaronno-based tipple every now and again, so a dessert featuring amaretto was a sure-fire way to win our hearts. So much so that J had declared a girl crush before she'd even tasted the tart.

The filling was soft and squidgy, with occasional bursts of sweetness from the raspberries - totally nom.

There was even Amaretto left over for us to swig...I mean, sip in a lady-like fashion.

It was a good evening.

A Genuine Five-Minute Stove-to-Sofa Dinner

The other night, B and I were both home late (me from work, him from the pub...yep, that's how we roll), and we were both absolutely starving - and tired. Dinner needed to be something filling and super-quick.

Step forward that most wondrous of all modern inventions - the fresh filled pasta. I love those bad boys. They take just minutes to cook, yet taste delicious - and they don't need much in the way of sauce or toppings to jazz them up.

Here's our five minute stove-to-sofa action plan:

00.00 - fill kettle with water and switch on.

00.30 - open fridge. Remove pasta and leftover pesto sauce. Get out bowls and forks. 
1.00 - place a large saucepan on the hob and fill with your now boiling water. Tip in the pasta.
1.30 to 4.00 - put on pyjamas, switch on TV, and feed disgruntled cat.
4.00 - drain pasta, divide between bowls. Stir the pesto sauce and drizzle over the pasta.
5.00 - sit down on sofa with a sigh of relief.   Probably there's a Friends repeat you can watch on telly.

Slow-Cooked Pork Chops In Milk

So, it's raining again.  What's up with that, London?  You're rubbish sometimes.  Still, do you know what cold, rainy weather gives you the perfect excuse to have?  Some slow-cooker action, oh yeah.

We had some pork chops in the freezer, left over from our last trip to the butcher's, and so we decided to have them as a mid-week treat.  Pork chops are a new dish for us - we've only made them once before - so I trawled the Internet for some ideas on how to cook them.  I came across this, and after some initial reluctance from B ("cooked in what? Milk?  MILK?!"), we gave it a try. 

WARNING - THIS RECIPE REQUIRES ADVANCE PLANNING

You will need:

2 pork chops (1 per person)
1 onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, chopped (feel free to use less, if you're not a garlic fan, or none at all, if you're a vampire)
Salt & pepper
3/4 pt skimmed milk

In the morning before work, chop your onion and garlic and arrange them in the bottom of your slow cooker.  Pop your pork chops on top, and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.  Pour in the milk, replace the lid on the slow cooker, switch the machine to low, and off you go to work.  That's all the prep you need to do, and it takes about ten minutes max.  You could even do it the night before if, like me, you're like a sleepy bear coming out of hibernation in the morning.

When you come home, you'll be greeted with a joyous sight like this:

YES YES YES.

We served ours with some Ebly to soak up the sauce, and some green vegetables on the side.  I bet some mushrooms cooked in with the sauce would be lovely, or  follow Epicurious' example by cooking potatoes in the pot. 

The pork comes out beautifully tender, and falls off the bone as soon as you look at it.  It was a little bit dry, which is strange, but there was plenty of liquid in the pot to make a gravy.  The milk cooks down to a nubbly, sweetish sauce, which sounds bizarre but goes very nicely with the meatiness of the chops.

Then we closed the windows against the rain and huddled up on the sofa with fruit, tea, and How I Met Your Mother re-runs.  Whenever you want to come back, summer, we'll be ready for you.

Broad Bean & Potato Omelette

Omelettes are amazing.  They're quick to make, so perfect for that weekday dinner when you've come home from work so hungry that you could almost eat the sofa.  Also, you can whack any old ingredients into them, so they're perfect for making something fabulous out of some tired odds and ends mouldering gently in the fridge.  That's exactly what we did yesterday - took the last of the potatoes, a handful of broad beans, and some chopped spring onions - and within half an hour had a golden plate of crispy-edged deliciousness.

B made a lovely salad from bagged leaves and some croutons we discovered in the back of the cupboard (left over from this meal I believe.  Old old!)

Faboosh!

Smoked Trout & Potato Salad

Yesterday I was in CW returning some library books and posting some letters (oh, the impossibly glamorous life I lead!), which gave me the perfect opportunity to explore the recently redeveloped-and-expanded Waitrose there. I thought I'd died and gone to food lovers' heaven. That place is massive! It has a cheese counter! And a patisserie counter! I spent a very happy half-hour wandering around, but for the sake of my bank balance restricted my purchases to some lovely fruit, yogurt, and smoked trout for dinner.

I served the trout with a potato salad - I boiled the potatoes from the parents' care package until soft, then dressed them whilst still warm with lots of olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh marjoram. 

It was all delicious - light, fresh, and summery - but, I have to confess, there just wasn't enough of it.   B looked mournfully at his empty plate and announced he could eat the same amount again. To tell the truth, I could have too.

We inhaled the whole pot of this awesome passion fruit yogurt in an attempt to silence the hunger pangs.

Summer Vegetable Carbonara

My parents paid us a flying visit this weekend, and came laden with goodies for us.

A cookbook for me to read.....

....and a huge box of homegrown yums from their vegetable garden at home.   Can you believe they manage to grow so much from one plot?  It's pretty amazing.   They could be Tom and Barbara from The Good Life.   If it were still the 1970's. 

Some things from the box needed to eaten pretty quickly, so last night we cooked up a storm with all the different vegetables:

Summer Vegetable Carbonara

You will need (serves 2):

A few spring onions, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 small courgette, chopped

2 small carrots, chopped

A handful fresh peas, podded

Handful fresh spinach

Chopped ham or bacon

Handful cherry tomatoes, halved

2 eggs

Dried pasta

Put a big pan of water onto boil.  Finely chop your onions and garlic and cook over a low heat until soft.  Add your carrots and courgette, chopped small, and stir occasionally to prevent sticking.  At this point you can put your pasta on to cook.  When the pasta has about five minutes left, add the peas, tomatoes and chopped ham to the pan of vegetables. 

Drain your pasta, reserving 1 spoonful of the water to go into your sauce.  Return the pasta to its saucepan, and pour over all the delicious cooked vegetables.  Add the fresh spinach and a good twist of black pepper at this point, then crack in your 2 eggs.  Give everything a good energetic stir so that all the pasta is goopily coated, and serve.  You can add some grated cheese on the top, if you like.  We did!

For pudding, I cooked the stems of rhubarb and bagful of gooseberries that were tucked away at the bottom of the box.  I simply chopped the rhubarb into lengths, then put those, plus the gooseberries, into a large pan with a good sprinkling of sugar, a cinnamon stick, a slug of sloe gin (yep, still trying to use that bad boy up), and a cupful of water. 

Don't the colours look amazing?

We let the fruit cook until soft to the touch, and then served with natural yogurt.

Rainy Day Barbeque

Oh, the joys of a British summer.  Rain on a Saturday when you're attending a long-planned and long-awaited barbeque?  Why not!  Luckily, our friends who had organised the barbeque are intrepid and hardy souls who blithely ignored the pouring rain and fired up the barbeque under the cover of their garage door.  By the time we arrived, the rain had paused and the sun was even trying to make a tentative appearance. 

They know how to throw a barbeque, as well.  We were served lots of lovely salads and bread, as well as joints of beef and pork which were barbequed whole, and then sliced into fat chunks for us all to drool over. 

We also did a wine-tasting challenge....

...in which I improved on past performance by identifying two out of the six wines served.   Last year I scored zero.  Not my proudest moment.  This year I did better by copying the answers of those around me. 

When the rain began again, we retreated indoors for dessert: 

Ahhh, Eton Mess.  Is there anything that can beat a huge bowl of creamy, meringue-y, strawberry goodness on a summer's day?  I think not. 

There was cheese too.  My happiness was complete.

Porridge with Blackberries & Brown Sugar

This blog has been a bit light on content this week, because I haven't had many proper dinners (sad face!)  My evenings have been full of everything except food, and that equals a Very Bad Week in my book. But when I know I'm going to have a busy night, I always try to make sure I fuel up on a filling breakfast that morning, to keep me going for as long as possible.

Breakfasts are great! I don't understand people who can merrily last through until lunchtime on just a decaf coffee and an eleven o'clock custard cream. Pretty much as soon as I wake up, I'm thinking about what I could eat. If I'm pressed for time, it's normally a bowl of Alpen or some toast with peanut butter. If I've got a couple more minutes, I'll make up some bircher (which transports brilliantly in a tupperware for an at-your-desk breakfast) or the best energy-giving breakfast of all:  porridge.

You can make porridge in the microwave, but I can't.  It always bubbles over and crusts hard onto the inside of the microwave, whilst in the bowl I'm left with some strange crater-y rubble. So I find it easier to make it in a pan over a low heat, stirring gently until all the liquid is absorbed. I use half milk and half water to make the porridge creamy but not too luxurious (it is still a simple breakfast, after all). I like to play around with the toppings - B is a big fan of golden syrup, I favour honey. The cupboard was a little bit bare this week, so I went with a big handful of blackberries from the freezer, and a whole heaping of brown sugar.

And lots of coffee, of course.  One coffee good, two coffees better.

Bangers & Mash With Red Wine Gravy

Ugh.  It was One of Those Days.  The tube was delayed so I was late to work.  I went out without a coat and the weather turned Machiavellian on me and I froze to death walking home.  Gahhhhh.  But you know what?  Food cures all bad-day blues.  Particularly food like this:

Oh yes, my friends.  Those are Gloucester Old Spot sausages from the Ginger Pig.   Served with mashed potatoes, roasted cabbage, and a thick, gloopily delicious gravy made with red wine and a chopped onion.  Food to make you smile. 

For pudding, we ritzed up a box of £1-from-the-fruit-stall strawberries:

Mojito Strawberries

Wash and de-stalk your strawberries.  Slice the large ones in half and pop into a nice serving bowl.  (Isn't mine pretty?  So yellow!)  Liberally sprinkle with sugar and the juice from half a fresh lime.  Pour over a capful of rum (or gin...really, whatever liquor you have in the cupboard.  We used sloe gin!  We've got to use up that bottle somehow!) and leave the strawberries to marinate for half an hour or so.  Then eat quickly for maximum yumminess. 

Grilled Aubergines With Pesto

Ah, aubergines.  You keep showing up in my life (and veg box) at the moment, and I'm running low on ideas on how to cook you whilst disguising your strangely squishy texture.  But then the other day, I was leafing through my recipe binder, where I keep a motley collection of ideas copied from library books/torn from magazines/stolen off my mum, and discovered a biro'd scribble for Aubergines With Pesto.  With basil being so plentiful in the supermarkets at the moment, it sounded like the perfect summer dish.

I'm pretty sure this is a Nigel Slater recipe. 

Aubergines With Pesto

Slice one aubergine per person into thick slices.  Criss-cross the slices with a sharp knife and brush with oil.  Oven bake for around 15-20 minutes until golden.

Meanwhile, make up a  portion of pesto.  Be generous with your Parmesan.  When the aubergine is ready, slather the slices with as much pesto as you can physically fit on, and then slide under the grill for 5 minutes.  It's ready when the pesto topping is bubbling and melting deliciously all over the place.

Before...

We served a brown rice salad with this, which sounds boring, but was actually a perfect accompaniment for the big, bold flavour of the aubergine/pesto combo.  Simply boil 100g brown rice in water and a little bit of stock powder until cooked through.  Add chopped spring onions, plenty of fresh or dried herbs (whatever you have - we used basil and marjoram), and salt and pepper.  Dress with olive oil, vinegar, and let it cool for about twenty minutes to absorb all the flavours from the herbs.

Mmmmm after!

We had fresh cherries for dessert.   I wore some of them as jewellery for a while.

Egg Noodles With Green Vegetables

We have a mid-week veg box delivery, which means that early on in the week we always have odds and ends of stray vegetables to finish up.  A courgette here, some cabbage there - not enough for a meal in themselves, which is why we often fall back on the tried-and-tested favourite: the stirfry.  Our go-to accompaniment is nearly always noodles - they last forever in the cupboard and take hardly any effort or time to cook, which is a big plus on a busy weeknight.

Here we had a green vegetable stirfry, including broad beans (which yes, I had laboriously podded), courgettes, and cabbage.  A bit of carrot may have sneaked in, but let's ignore that or the title of this post will have to be changed.   If you like a touch of luxury, it's a nice trick to crack an egg into your noodles just before serving - it cooks in seconds and binds everything together in a yummy gooey way.  Because the vegetables were all still fresh and perky, we didn't want to overpower them and so stayed away from the spice jars, relying on garlic and soy sauce for flavouring.   Delicious!

In case you were wondering from the picture above - yes, I was eating this meal off my lap whilst in my pyjamas.  Come on, we've all been there.

Roadtripping Snacks & Hangover Breakfasts

This weekend we road-tripped it to Birmingham for an epic hen party (there were strippers.  Plural.)  There are strict traditions when it comes to road trips - you have to over-stock the car with some late nineties pop tunes, and you have, have, have to organise both sweet and savoury snackage.   You know, for in case you break down and are stranded for hours on the roadside. 

There was much partying and much drinking on the Saturday night,  so on Sunday we needed some urgent R&R (rest and refuelling) before the drive home.  Luckily there was a Wetherspoon's just a short stagger from the hotel.  There's nothing like a cheap breakfast to cure a hangover.

Rehydrating.

Mmmm...fried things in a sandwich.

Pancaken!

And then we hit Sainsbury's for more snacks for the journey home. 

Mushroom Stroganoff

Thank goodness for Fridays. Just when you think the week is going to last forever, Friday comes along and everything seems much better than it did before. This Friday we had B's mother staying, but she was arriving on a late train, so we had to whip something nice but quick for dinner.   We had mushrooms (plus a little oozy interloper) in the fridge. 

Step forward Nigella's delicious recipe for Mushroom Stroganoff. This is such a good dish - it's a quick, throw-it-all-in-the-pan meal, but one that still manages to look and taste like a lot more effort has gone into it. It makes an inspired dinner party choice as well. 

Nigella recommends rice to have alongside, but we usually make Ebly, or pasta, on the grounds that we are lazy, and cooking rice for some reason seems more effortful than cooking pasta.

We had a (shop bought) chocolate tart for pudding. Look how nicely The Cat is sitting at the table with his serving. His manners are impeccable you know.