Like a lot of people, we found ourselves eating up all sorts of bits and pieces after Christmas. We bought sprouts onnastalk for our festive dinner of roast goose, cooked a load up for the meal and subsequent bubble ‘n’ squeak, and then … forgot all about them. I’d stashed the stalk in the log…
unexpected chicken
I found a bag of unlabelled … something in the freezer. It looked quite chickenish, and I assumed that it was a brace of chicken breasts. Anyhoo, out it came, with a vague plan to stuff with blue cheese. I was quite surprised post thawing to find that the bag in fact contained four chicken thighs,…
chicken wings
I nipped (or popped) up to Iceland for some porridge oats. I know, I know, they’re much more expensive, but they are on the doorstep, and time is money and all that. I also came home with two packs of 2 x pasties for £2, two packs of sliced cheese (I like this for portion control)…
my Magimix
I’ve had my Magimix for years – I bought it, and a whole batch of blades, many years ago, when I was much better off than I am now 🙂 It’s always sat there on the worktop, but I don’t actually use it all that much – veg for soup, whipping up the odd cake when…
salad, salad, salad
We’re not huge fans of salad, or at least of the lettuce-ish variety; however, recently I’ve been making us a raw vegetable based luncheon a few days a week, on the basis that I eat too many carbs, and we could both do with more fresh veg. Mostly, it is some combination of cucumber, spring…
a real treat
We had planned a day out on Sunday, to do some City of Culture stuff, watch them take Blade out of Queen Victoria Square, have lunch. But it was raining, and we had work to do, so we didn’t. That’s the joy of self-employment, it’s either famine or feast. We have an Iceland pretty much…
potatoes dauphinoise with embedded ham
I bought a gammon from Iceland for the Christmas festivities – it was … OK, but not great, and very salty, so it languished in the fridge. There was also half a chunk of Gruyere, as I had done dauphinoise potatoes with the Christmas lunch, and some cream. So last night, Pete sliced potatoes very thinly…
rhubarb ginger sponge pudding
We were invited to Sunday lunch with some friends at the weekend, as Piers had a new toy to play with, and he wished to mandolin lots of potatoes to make a dauphinoise. It would have been churlish not to pop over and help them out with the consumption of same. So we did. As an…
chocolate aubergine cake
This recipe comes from Harry Eastwood’s book Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache, and is entitled by her Chocolate Heartache Cake. There are some cracking recipes in there, but the style of writing makes me clench my teeth, so I prefer to write up my own version without the schmaltz! roughly 400g of aubergine 300g best dark chocolate…