What's for lunch on Easter?

So the loooonnnggg weekend has been and gone and our Easter Sunday lunch has been gobbled up, and I think I miss it a little! Can't wait to have everyone over again because this one was definitely a success! Our contributing partners were 6 friends and then us, and they supplied some pre-lunch nibbles, while the Chef was working his magic - a Butterflied lamb marinated in Spanish smoky paprika, garlic and lemon juice, and a Spatchcock chicken marinated in garlic and herbs. Both done to perfection on the Weber. The lamb was a little dry due to the fact that needed to be basted constantly, but I may have been the only 1 that felt this.

We served this with couscous and mash potatoes, a salad of mixed greens, and then cucumber and cherry tomatoes served separately. Lastly we had some homemade tzatiki and red cabbage mixed through with balsamic vinegar, spring onions and garlic. Quite a spread that went down pretty quickly!

I think made a gorgeous sorbet and it was super simple! Based on a Spanish cocktail, it was very easy to make up and delicious to eat.
So you'll need:
300g Castor sugar
300ml water
300ml Red wine - a Spanish wine like a Rioja, or a nice fruity Shiraz blend. This doesn't have to be fancy, a nice quaffable wine works best!
300ml fizzy lemonade
zest and juice of 1 lemon.

Dissolve the sugar in the water over a medium heat and then bring to a rapid boil for 5 to 7 minutes before the syrup starts to colour. Put aside to cool. Combine the wine, lemonade and lemon juice in a large jug and add the cooled syrup when it's ready. Give it a good stir and either put it into 1 deep freezer container to be used all at once, or divide it into smaller containers to be used at different times.

Pop in the freezer and give it a muss up with a fork every 15minutes for the 1st hour or so. When you're ready to serve it, put small quantities into a food processor to blend it up to be fluffy and smooth.

And you're done! We served this before dessert which was Gordon Ramsay's Dark Chocolate Torte served with pouring cream. This is in his Just Desserts book and was divine! Our oven runs a little hot so we'll take the temperature down next time, but otherwise it was lovely! Recipe to follow I promise!

Follow this and add to it with plenty of wine and some Easter choccies and it certainly was a fun day! Looking forward to thinking up our next dinner menu. I'm feeling French, classic and warm for these autumnal nights that are quickly turning to winter. Lamb shanks, Coq au Vin and delicious heart-warming meals here we come! I can't decide what I love most about winter - the clothes, the food or the red wine? Staying in with friends is definitely up there too.

Ciao
xoxo

And the weekend of food continued!

After the gastronomic extravaganza that was Sunday, Marty hit the pans again for a delicious dinner on Monday night too. He whipped up part of the following meal - the dauphinoise and the chicken - but I would definitely recommend adding some greens to this. The cream overload proved exactly that and I certainly felt guilty for not having the RDI of green veg!

The dauphinoise were spectacular, the chicken delicious and the link http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chicken-recipes/mustard-chicken-quick-dauphinoise-greens too easy! My other recommendation for this meal is to perhaps separate the 2 creamy aspects into different meals. The reason being is that this foodie has not consumed that made rich dairy in months in one sitting and was very sick and unhappy the next day. I did think it was food poisoning at 1 point, but Marty wasn't sick and is so fastidious about cleanliness and the correct procedures when dealing with chicken that I knew it couldn't be that. It left me to believe that it was simply MY stomach that was being intolerant. If you eat rich food on a regular basis it may be fine for you, Marty consumes an incredible amount of dairy on a daily basis and was alright, but besides the daily - and sometimes not if I'm being good - flat white with 1, I don't do a lot of dairy.

The most unfortunate part of this all is that I LOVE Dauphinoise, and because I was so sick and lost my appetite - it's still misplaced - I didn't get to enjoy the leftovers.

Some time this week I'm going to update you on the Preservation Factory and how we did the preserved lemons. And I'll give you a sneak peek of what Easter Lunch is going to look like. Will there be another dessert collaboration? Will the lamb be traditional or is the Chef going to mix it up? Anyone have something exciting they're doing and would like to share? I look forward to hearing from you!

Ciao
xoxo

Double Feature weekend - Chicken Tagine and Tiramisu..

Wow, what weekend of great food and cooking! Marty definitely got his groove back and decided to cook up a storm on Sunday! Chicken, Olive and Preserved Lemon Tagine followed by Tiramisu. I will say right up front I have never been a Tiramisu fan, but this one was unbelievably good. Not too heavy, beautiful flavours and quite simply to die for. The Chicken Tagine however I feel needs some work and a couple of adjustments, but to that later!

Before I go any further, here is the link for the Tiramisu recipe - because you have to go and try it: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/other-recipes/best-tiramisu. I'll run you through the tagine recipe, and also let you know what would be the variations we'd do now. I think after the Beef tagine was such a success, I expected the same from this dish. Not that it wasn't, it just wasn't what I'd been expecting. In most Moroccan dishes there's this beautiful balance of sweet and savoury and spicy, as was the beef with the prunes and the Moroccan spices. This one was much saltier - should have guessed it by the name I suppose - and there are are definite things that can be done the next time we make this - because there will be a next time - to improve on this first experience and make it a dish to remember. I've learnt from Marty that the most important thing about cooking is a little experimentation, and when you're trying something new and it doesn't work, it's best not to give up, but tweak and adjust because that's where a beautiful dish can come from. I mean, Jamie does is a cookbook all about tweaking and updating traditional recipes!

The first step in the tagine is the preparation of the chicken.To serve 4-6 the recipe calls for a whole chicken, skin-on and jointed into 4. The butcher would be able to do it, but you can generally buy it like this in a 'barbeque' style pack. Then you need to prepare a rub for the chicken to marinate in consisting of:

• 1 heaped tsp coriander seeds, bashed up
• 1 level tsp ground cumin
• 1 heaped tsp ground ginger
• 2 tbs olive oil
• seal salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix all of this together, put the chicken pieces into a large bowl and massage the rub into the chook, cover and allow to marinate for a couple of hours or preferably overnight.

When it's time to cook, you're going to brown the chicken in your casserole pot/tagine, and while that's happening you want to chop a fennel bulb into 8, chop a couple of onions, and get a good sized bunch of fresh coriander and cut the stalks off. That's the part you want to use. You can add these to the mix once that chicken is deliciously golden brown and mix around. Now here comes the exoticness! A good pinch of saffron, about 80gm of stoned black and green olives (1st bit of salt) and a preserved lemon, chopped up. 1 if it's homemade, 2 if it's store bought. Add about 500ml of hot stock, chicken and preferably organic, cover and simmer on a low heat for about and 1 and a half. It was more like 2 in the end. Keep an eye out and give it an occasional stir. Add water if it's starting to look dry, and if, when the chicken's cooked and it looks a little bit liquidy, let it blip away with the lid off for a little to thicken slightly (Jamie's words not mine! but it accurately describes the sound it makes!)

Serve with steaming couscous and a sprinkle of coriander leaves. It is such a simple delicious dish. However, whether it was the combination of cooking a little longer, preserved lemons being strong or the added olives I found it overwhelmingly salty. The lemons are preserved with salt - another subject for another post- so they have a lot going on already, and I did our homemade ones Marty's way without adding the cinnamon and bay leaves which would have helped to soften the flavour. They've also been preserving for about 3 months now so they're pungent. Next time I would only use half or a quarter instead of 1 for a more subtle taste. the olives themselves where salty, so the 3 variations I can see in the future are:
1. No lemons
2. No olives
3. No olives or lemons.

I'll get back to you on what combination worked best. I think that by halving the lemon and maybe the same for the olives will allow the rest of the dish to work without being overwhelmed by these strong flavours.

I have no variations for you on the Tiramisu, only to say it was simple to make - I helped with some of it, and absolutely delicious. the added egg whites to the mascapone meant that it wasn't a thick, heavy dessert and it wasn't overwhelmed with coffee and cream. I used freshly ground and percolated coffee as opposed to instant coffee and it made a lot of difference to a smooth and subtle taste.

Looking forward to hearing how it went when you make it!

Ciao xoxo

Patatas Bravas recipe

Much apologies because this has been a long time coming! I'm going to load up the recipe as directed by Jamie, but will also let you know what we did differently.

So Patatas Bravas actually means 'fierce potatoes', and these can be found in just about any tapas bar around the world in any number of variations. The thing that makes ordinary potatoes fierce is the spicy tomato sauce they're cooked and served in!

This recipe serves 4 as tapas, we used it as a side but had plenty left over!

You'll need:

• 4 medium potatoes, peeled and halved
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
• 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked
• 1tsp sweet paprika
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 tsp sea salt

For the bravas sauce

• olive oil
• 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
• 3 fresh red chillies, deseeded and roughly chopped
• 1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
• a few sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
• 1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbs sherry vinegar
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

The sauce is where we improvised a little and used the Five Brothers Summer Tomato Basil Sauce. After trying every available tomato sauce a few years back this is the one we settled on as the best. It has great flavours, good spices, but most importantly it tastes like tomato. We used it instead of the can of chopped tomatoes, and were able to use less of the thyme and garlic. No skimping on the chillies though!

So, what you'll need to do first is parboil those potatoes over a medium heat for about 10 to 15 minutes, or until they're starting to get tender but still holding their shape. Drain in a colander and leave to steam dry until cool.

Meanwhile, put a pan on a low heat and start your bravas sauce. Add a lug of olive oil and, once hot, add the chopped onion and sliced garlic. Cook for 5 minutes or until the onion is soft but not coloured. Add the chillies, carrot and thyme leaves and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the tinned tomatoes, sherry vinegar and a good pinch of salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 15 minutes or until the carrots are soft and the sauce is nice and thick.

While your sauce simmers, put a large frying pan on a medium heat and add 0.5cm of olive oil. Cut your potatoes into large bite-sized chunks. Once the oil is hot, carefully add your potatoes to the pan. You'll want to cook them for around 8 minutes, turning occasionally until golden all over. You'll need to do this in batches so that you don't overcrowd the pan. Add your garlic and rosemary leaves for the last minute of cooking.

Transfer the potatoes, garlic and rosemary onto a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain, then scatter over the paprika, fennel seeds and a good pinch of salt and toss together until well coated.

Carefully tip your sauce into a blender or use a hand blender and whizz until lovely and smooth - to be honest because we'd used the different sauce we kept it a little chunky and didn't blend. Have a taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Serve in a jug next to your potatoes, or if you'd rather be more traditional - as we did - pour the sauce over the potatoes and toss then serve. Keep any leftover sauce for a pizza base or pasta.

Enjoy!
xoxo

Courgette recipe

After a couple of requests for this recipe, I thought I'd post it on here!

 Serves 6 to 8 as a side                                                                                       

2 tablespoons olive oil (or duck fat if not for veggies)

3 onions, peeled and very finely sliced

180g basmati rice

7 medium courgettes, finely sliced

500ml hot chicken or vegetable stock, preferably organic

4 heaped tbls crème fraiche

150g Emmental or Cheddar cheese, finely grated

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil

Method

The secret to this very simple dish is to use the best stock you can find.

Preheat the oven to 190 C/Gas 5. Get a large frying pan on a low heat and add the olive oil (or duck fat) and a splash of water. Once melted and hot, add the sliced onions and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until soft and sticky. Meanwhile, rinse your rice under cold running water until the water runs clear.

When the onions look ready, add the sliced courgettes to the pan along with the rice. Mix them up then pour in the hot stock. Turn the heat up and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want the mixture to stay quite loose and oozy, so add a little more stock if needed. Take the pan off the heat and gently stir in the crème fraiche and 100g of your grated cheese. Add a good pinch of salt and pepper, then have a taste and adjust the seasoning if need be.

Lightly oil a roasting tray, gratin dish or casserole type pan, approx. 25cmx32cm. Tip everything into your prepared tray, making sure the rice is evenly distributed. Roughly flatten it out and try get most of the courgette on top to help keep in the moisture as it cooks. Sprinkle over the rest of the grated cheese.

Bake in the hot oven for 40 minutes, or until the top is golden and bubbling and the rice is beautifully cooked and has absorbed most of the liquid.

Can be served next to grilled meat or fish, or with a fresh salad.

Enjoy friends! xoxo