Proper stodgy food

When you get as much snow as we had today, you need a good, warming meal in the evening, with lots of fat and baking or roasting involved. Tonight we had chipolatas baked in the oven nestled around veg (onions, whole garlic cloves, pieces of yellow pepper, carrot and courgette) with roasted new potatoes and leeks in white sauce. Perfect winter food. I ate loads, but still feel hungry when I look at this photo and see the glistening fat on the potatoes. Such gorgeous flavours - proper stodgy food.

Tamarind King Prawns

I love this meal. I know it's not very food-sluttish of me, but I'm making a concerted effort to eat more healthily this month after the gluttony of Christmas. And this meal feels and looks healthy.

While I was cooking some brown rice, I marinated a pack of king prawns in a big bowl with lots of freshly grated ginger, 3 cloves of finely chopped garlic, the juice of a lemon (lime's even better), a jar of Bart's tamarind paste (sometimes I just use half but today I thought 'sod it, I'll put it all in'), a pinch of crushed chilies and some black pepper. This meal is good with a mixture of veg, but today I added finely chopped red pepper, carrot and red onion to the bowl. Then I fished the prawns out of the marinade/veg mix. I simmered the veg and most of its marinade in the sauce, adding the prawns to warm through at the end. It's great served on top of some brown rice (for the nutty flavour and texture - white rice would be rubbish) with a wedge of lime.

Fortunately, I have a visual record of Christmas dinner...

Oh, yes!

Turkey, roast potatoes, sausages, bacon rolls, sausage stuffing balls, nutty veggie stuffing, sprouts and chestnuts with pancetta, peas to add some colour and a bit of gravy for softening and flavour (but not on the potatoes - oh no!).

Of course I will...

My mum's homemade sherry trifle (with silver balls artistically scattered by yours truly rather than almonds).

And here's her mereigue, cream, pear and pomegranate concoction.

Who said 'detox diet'????

A trifle too full

Noones written on our blog for a little while, I guess it's because we've all been too busy stuffing our faces with turkey, trifle and fine wines. I was so excited at the thought of Christmas dinner I forgot to take any pictures - my husband's mother is a fantastic cook and did a splendid lunch with all the trimmings. We didn't sit down until 4pm and we were still at the table eating cheese at 11pm in between rounds of Scrabble and limoncello liqueur!

But it wouldn't be Christmas without a trifle, would it? And he's a picture of my Mum's homemade version we had on Boxing Day, made with fresh fruit, sherry, custard and cream, with almonds on the top. Always a winner. But this trifle had a contender ... a chocolate gateau, again homemade with no less than 99% cocoa chocolate that we bought in France before Christmas. It was scrumptious - deliciously rich. I had to be carried to the sofa for a nap afterwards!

By the way it seems like fellow blogger Food Slut has had a delectable Christmas! Please put a couple of your pics up here for us to salivate over!

I was pretty excited when I saw this...

Well, relatively excited, or maybe as excited as I could be seeing a new product in a supermarket that I don't care that much about. Anyway, I thought this 'panini pizza' looked like it had potential. (Roasted veg, mozzarella, panini/pizza - great!) Sadly, I was wrong. Ok, I know pictures on ready-made food boxes aren't always to be trusted, but really... this only had about 2 bits of veg in it, and a load of cream cheese (it says creme fraiche but I think they are lying).


I griddled it, as instructed 'for best results'. It was pretty horrible and I wouldn't recommend it.

Hangover tuna etc...

Today I had a mammoth hangover. It was our work Christmas party last night and we made the most of the free booze. Fortunately I made it into work - I might not have been particularly productive, but I guess those who managed to make it in were able to show a bit of willing! At lunchtime we needed carbs - carbs and cheese. And somewhere cheapish with a free table for 6 in central London 10 days before Christmas.

The obvious choice? Well, Pizza Express, of course as they don't take table reservations. I decided to have an American with extra sundried tomatoes - I guess they didn't have any sundried as when my pizza turned up I saw they'd replaced them with the marinated, oven-cooked tomatoes they've recently added to their menu as an appetiser. Much better - I love those tomatoes. It was wonderful - a perfect pizza in my view - but my plate was dirty with bits of old spinach which I could have done without. I wasn't sure afterwards if I felt better or worse, but by about 5.00pm I was ok, I think.

Anyway, tonight I needed something healthy and we had a pack of stirfry veg in the fridge so I thought I may as well use that. I went past a Tesco Express on my way home and saw they had tuna steaks on offer - I got two for £2 something - I thought that was pretty good. We put some brown rice on to boil and I smeared the tuna in a mixture of finely grated ginger and garlic, a couple of dessert spoons of olive oil, a spoon of lemon vinegar, some dried coriander leaves, a crushed, dried chilli and a bit of black pepper. We did the stirfry veg in a wok and added a dash or two of soy sauce and sherry vinegar, then griddled the tuna steaks on a high heat for a couple of minutes each side, or maybe even less time than that. With nutty brown rice, simple veg and deliciously tender tuna this felt like a healthy end to a decidedly unhealthy day.

Going nuts

Last week a fellow blogger and I went to a stylish new restaurant jumping on the eco-bandwagon - Acorn House. I had read great reviews about the place but it did seem a little good to be true ... delicious food, a great atmosphere and totally environmentally sustainable. All caring and sharing - the perfect place to keep our guests happy for a few hours.

We started off well with a refreshing pear juice - I could even choose the fruit myself from the baskets behind me that decorated the walls. This set us up well for a delicious mozzarella salad (the cheese was divine, just the right bitterness/creaminess/chewiness). Just how mozzarella should be. For the main course I chose sea bream with roasted vegetables. The fish was just lovely, but the butternut squash still quite crunchy - I prefer it a bit creamier. My colleague chose cavallo nero ravioli. Cabbage ravioli. Doesn't sound the most appealing of foods and to be honest he didn't look enamoured with his portion of just five pieces at first - but he tells me it was very tasty.

By this time we'd polished off a few glasses of wine and we were soaking in the jovial atmosphere of the place. It's kind of a cross between a posh cafe and Fresh n Wild, the organic shop. Fortunately I had left just enough space for the chocolate ginger cake. Yum. So we left feeling very satified that we'd just enjoyed a lovely meal - and had done our bit for the planet too!

Sunday roast beef

Wow, I'm stuffed. And I think I might pop into our local butcher's on Monday morning to give Tom the Butcher a kiss - the joint of beef (Scotch topside) he sold me yesterday morning was simply incredible. It even looked so perfect when it was cooking that I took a photo of it in the pan (see below).

I dabbed it with a mixture of grainy mustard and butter, roasted it at 220 degrees centigrade for half an hour, then sloshed a glass or so of red wine over it and turned the oven down to 200 for about an hour. I left it to rest for a good twenty minutes while I simmered the carrots and beans and made the red wine gravy. As you can see from the steamy photo, we had roasted salad potatoes (I had lots in the cupboard and when roasted they're lovely and sweet), roasted parsnips and boiled carrots and beans. And we opened a bottle of beaujolais - roast beef just wouldn't be the same without a glass of red wine.

Somehow, everything worked perfectly - the meat was rare and beautifully tender, just how I like it, the potatoes were crispy on the outside and fluffy in the middle and everything else turned out really well. I was really pleased as I haven't cooked a roast for ages and last time I overdid the potatoes (even I admitted they were a little too charred, and I love crunchy roast potato) so I wasn't expecting too much from this one. And I even had a bit of gravy on the meat - as its main ingredient was red wine.

And yes, of course we had seconds. But fortunately I bought such a large joint there's loads left for the rest of the week. Cold roast beef butties - I can't wait!

Boxtastic

I must be honest - my interest in the fruit and veg box has started to wane slightly lately. Every time I open the fridge door instead of the usual chocolate digestives I'm confronted with a pile of fruit and veg - there were three cabbages in there at last count! It's good cos it means we are getting a stack of vitamins but I'm constantly racking my brains for ways to cook beetroots and red russian kale. But on Tuesday when I found the box waiting on my doorstep it looked so delicious that I couldn't resist taking a picture. And with my eagerness renewed I've vowed to sort out some good recipes this weekend. Cabbage, anyone?