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?

Pizza Express, 83-7 Parkway, Camden NW1 7PP

I've just been out in Camden, but as we had an hour or so to kill before the gig we were going to started, my boyfriend and I met at Pizza Express. To review it succinctly, the food was good but the service was terrible, even though the restaurant was almost empty.

I had an American pizza (tomato, mozzarella and pepperoni) with extra chargrilled Italian vegetables. My boyfriend had a Bosco salad (marinated, cooked mushrooms, mini mozzarella balls, spinach, a honey and mustard dressing and dough sticks). I spied a new nibble on their menu, rustic tomatoes, which I thought I'd order to try, but sadly they didn't arrive until after our main course had been served and I'd had a chance to remind the waiter.

The rustic tomatoes had been marinated and oven-baked then left to cool. Served in a little dish with a few cocktail sticks, they were succulent, sweet and actually made rather a nice accompaniment to the pizza and salad, although they would have been equally as good as an appetiser. My pizza was pretty cold, but not cold enough to complain, and it had a good amount of topping as they didn't stint on either the pepperoni or the veg. The waiter had tried to persuade me I'd ordered an American Hot, but fortunately it seems my real pizza was waiting for me as it arrived virtually instantly. I do like Pizza Express pizzas, as (when they're made and cooked well) they have the perfect ratio of topping to base - I can't bear a bare pizza, or one with so much crust your jaws ache just looking at it. The salad across the table from me looked a bit small, so, to put it smugly I was pleased with my choice, which is always satisfying.

I sipped a half bottle of house pinot grigio, which was fine, and my boyfriend drank peroni after peroni, served in an effeminate, tiny, branded glass - very strange. He wanted banoffee pie, which I grudgingly said I'd share. Of course, when it arrived I ate most of it, although it was fairly disappointing - too much tasteless cream, not enough toffee, a thick, cardboard-like base and some old and tired banana. I've made it sound worse than it was, but it tasted more factory than home-made - and it's hardly difficult to make banoffee pie at home, or, I'd imagine, in a Pizza Express kitchen.

We waited so long for the bill and had to ask for it three times, so I wondered whether they wanted us to pay at all. It was £42 for the lot - not bad really considering the booze, but I think the poor service might put me off returning to that particular branch, although the pizza and salad were the usual reliable fare.

Sweet chilli prawn salad

After consuming much more pâté than we had intended - it was just so moreish - we needed something fresh and zesty for our Sunday supper, and we had some big prawns in the fridge which we fancied eating. So I made this quick and easy salad with baby spinach leaves, halved cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced organic carrots, sliced yellow pepper and the prawns scattered artistically, I hoped, over the top. I made a tangy sweet chilli dressing (about 2 teaspoons of Blue Dragon sweet chilli dipping sauce, a couple of dessert spoons of sherry vinegar, about 4 dessert spoons of olive oil and some seasoning), poured it over and got stuck in. Lovely.

Patchwork Pâté

Patchwork Handmade Chilli and Lemongrass Chicken Liver pâté. Wow. Rustic yet elegant; rich yet light; traditional yet suffused with a modern, pan-asian twist; I like it a lot. It's even got parsley and mustard seeds sprinkled on the top to make it look pretty. Spread on bread - absolutely delicious.

Oh, and it's got nice-looking ingredients (chicken livers (57%), fresh onions, fat spread - only dodgy bit - fresh garlic, fresh ginger, red chilli (4%), lemongrass (2%), kaffir lime leaves, freshly ground black pepper, sea salt). Find it in a deli/butcher's/farmer's market near you... it's not sold in supermarkets.

Another great breakfast...

A bacon and egg butty. This morning's was cooked to perfection by my boyfriend - we think it's possibly the best thing he's ever cooked me. Toasted wholemeal bread, 3 rashers of unsmoked back bacon, grilled to a crisp, a perfectly fried egg and a swirly squeeze of tomato ketchup in the finished butty. It looked so good I took two photos of it in different stages of its construction. Oohh, with the runny egg about to drip out of the edge of the sandwich... doesn't it look good?

Chocolate peanut tart

Well, I had to have this to make me feel satisfied after my paltry salad. I was looking for a brownie but our cafe didn't have any, and this was enthusiastically recommended by the cafe staff. I wasn't sure when I saw it was a chocolate peanut tart, as I'm not a huge fan of snickers and chocolate/peanut mixes in general, but actually it's fantastic. It's filled with a rich and smooth ganache, which does taste quite strongly, but not overpoweringly, of peanuts, and it is very chocolatey. The pastry is thin and crisp - perfect really. At £1.19, it's pretty good value and I think I'll look out for it again.

Insalata Tricolore - Zizzi, 73-5 Strand, WC2R 0DE

Well, we've just returned from a bloggers' lunch to welcome a new colleague at Zizzi's on the Strand. There were seven of us in all, and we had 4 pizzas, a calzone, a pasta dish and a salad between us. Mine was the salad - an insalata tricolore. It looked lovely - green and healthy, with cherry tomatoes, slices of avocado and tiny balls of mozzarella nestled in the spinach leaves and a pesto dressing. But I was slightly disappointed with the amount of mozzarella - I think I had six miniture balls - not really a main-course size. The avocado was all perfectly ripe - which was very welcome - but it was slightly flavourless; there were plenty of halved, sweet-tasting cherry tomatoes, but there wasn't anything like enough pesto dressing. All-in-all it was fine and looked pretty, but it wasn't anything to write home about. And by the end of the meal everyone else was stuffed, but I was still feeling a little peckish - that'll teach me not to choose a salad next time...

Oh, also, they got my order wrong and brought me a crayfish and snowpea salad instead of the tricolore, so I had to wait several minutes for my meal while my fellow diners were tucking in. This was unfortunate - we'd all had to wait an inexplicably long time for any drinks or food to arrive. I wasn't too bothered about it, as these things happen, but I thought they could have made a better salad as I'd had to wait so long for it.

Jumbo king prawn stirfry

Tonight we had a prawn stirfry, using Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Jumbo King Prawns (half price at £2.99). They were so nice we had to make a concerted effort to stop nibbling on them before I put them in the pan to heat through - it was one of those 'just one more each' moments, but we finally managed to resist after about six between the two of us.

Sharing the wealth between the supermarkets, I added one block of Sharwood's fine egg noodles (bought through Ocado, from Waitrose) to a pan of simmering water, put a Tesco mushroom stirfry pack into my wok with half a pack of Budgens' baby spinach and once it was cooked, a sachet of Blue Dragon chow mein sauce to warm through. (It's not like I'm proud of shopping at supermarkets so often - I wish other shops near us were open after normal working hours but sadly they're not, and if I want to do any independent/market shopping it has to be done at weekends, and that's not always possible.) So, anyway, back to the food... I drained the noodles, tossed it all together in a pan, tipped it into a couple of bowls and we ate it in front of the telly. Healthy, warming (see the steam rising from the bowl), filling, and taking just ten minutes from fridge to mouth, it's ideal fast food.

Pie Day

Feeling very proud of myself as I made a chicken pie last night. I started it on Monday night when I realised I had chicken and leeks I had to use up, so made the filling (using a recipe from Jamie's Dinners - highly recommended) in advance like some kind of uber-housewife. My husband got so over-excited about the meal to come that he wrote 'Pie Day' on the calendar - does that mean we need to get out more? Last night added some ready-made puff pastry to the top, baked until golden and served with mashed potato, mmmm. And we ate ALL the pie!

Yes, I feel sick.

I finished it a good ten/fifteen minutes ago, and I still feel sick.

Caramel slice

People say sushi is filling, but sadly they're wrong. It's only 3 hours since my 'deluxe' sushi meal and I'm already feeling pretty empty around the belly area. As I'm due to play netball in another 3 hours, I thought I owe it to my body to find something to raise my energy levels quickly. Intending to buy a Honeyrose Organic Brownie, I went downstairs to the cafe, only to find they'd run out. And there was a lonely looking caramel slice sitting just where the brownies usually reside. So it seemed like it was meant to be. It has a very thick, wonderfully sweet caramel layer; I would have liked the chocolate layer to be slightly thicker, as you can't really taste it much, but the shortbread underneath is light and crumbly and, although it doesn't have much flavour, it does its job - chiefly to support the caramel, just as the chocolate does its job topping it. Very sweet, very caramelly, very satisfying, and I imagine I'll feel very sick when I've finished it.

Pret 'deluxe' sushi

For £4.99 (and a stonking £5.85 to eat in) it's a rip-off. The maki rolls are fine, you do get lots of ginger and soy sauce, and and at least the rice sticks together so it's easier for novice chopstick users to eat without spilling it everywhere. But the ginger is very dry and flavourless, and the same goes for the prawn, salmon and tuna nigiri. All-in-all, it's pretty rubbish and I won't be buying it again.

Leerdammer cheese

Leerdammer cheese is pretty good stuff, you can add it to lots of things and it doesn't taste too offensive. Today I enjoyed a lovely Leerdammer, bacon and processed cheese combo on wholemeal brown rolls. Ketchup and HP sauce too, of course. Think I might have a KFC for dinner. Yum.

Pizza Expectations dashed

I was so disappointed when we went to Pizza Express last Saturday. I don't mean to have a bitch about it, as I hate it when food critics just moan and groan about meals they have eaten in lavish restaurants, but I actually left the restaurant feeling like I was going to be sick! In fact, I couldn't actually finish my lasagne because I started gagging, which was rather embarrassing. Normally it's a La Reine pizza every time, but I wanted to line my tummy as we were going out on the lash. My father-in-law raves about the lasagne there, so I thought I'd give it a try, but honestly, it was the worst I have ever eaten. Maybe it's just because I've had a few too many Delia home-made lasagnes? Her recipe is the best ever. Maybe I should forward it to Pizza Express. Gloopy and tasteless, their dish had the consistency of an Asda ready meal and surely noone in their right mind eats those. Yuck. You have been warned...

Scrambled eggs on toast

Is the best breakfast to warm you up. Creamy, steaming eggs on hot toast (preferably buttered with lurpak and spread with a thin layer of bovril) is also the ultimate comfort food. It's great when you're ill or wake up on a cold November morning and your heating is on the blink, like I did this morning - scrambled eggs on toast was just what I needed. It would have been best with crispy bacon too, but it was difficult enough in my semi-frozen state to do eggs, let alone bacon too. And the flat was so cold I didn't feel it was sensible to let the toast lose any heat as I buttered and bovriled it, so I had it without. It was good though - a hot breakfast on a chilly morning just can't be beaten.

Last night's dinner...

Was a triumph for a cook with no time, if I say so myself. I was knackered when I came in, but had to go and play netball, so I put the oven on to just under 200 degrees centigrade, stabbed a skewer through two big baking potatoes, shoved them on the middle shelf of the oven, then went out.

An hour and a half later I came home to a delicious smell wafting through the hall outside my flat (sorry, neighbours, if you came in hungry too). I went to the freezer and took out a tub labelled 'Beef and Ale casserole 24/09/06'. Ooohh, nice - please excuse the way I'm bigging up my own domestic goddess prowess, but I'm more used to peering at frozen meals I've cooked weeks before, wondering whether they're meatballs in a tomato sauce, chicken curry or some veg concoction, and worrying how long they've been stuck at the bottom of my freezer, then nuking them in the microwave and hoping I'm cooking the right accompaniments. But anyway, I love having home-cooked meals ready and waiting in the freezer. It took about 12 minutes in the microwave (2 stirs in the middle) for me to be sure it was piping hot throughout, then I left it to stand and shoved some leftover sweetcorn in the microwave too for a couple of minutes. I took the crispy (yet fluffy inside) potatoes out of the oven and, lo and behold, we had a warm, home-cooked, nutritious and tasty meal all ready in 15 minutes. Plus the potato cooking time, of course. Very satisfying.