Oodles of Noodles

Soooo.  Been a while.  Clearly something special was required to drag me from my non-writing stupor.

Because obviously we have been cooking.  We haven’t starved, or forgotten how fire works, we’ve just not been in the mood to tell you about it. Okay?

Mostly because it has not been super exciting.  That’s because all the super in our life has been stolen by the business of work.

So.

We needed a holiday.  So we took a cooking a holiday (a holiday of cooking, not a holiday from cooking).  One we have actually been planning since…2015?

That can’t be right.

Nope.  Dan’s Amazon order history confirms he bought me Ivan Ramen for Christmas 2015.  That’s…awkward.

I was so excited when he bought me this book.  It’s incredibly complicated.  The core bowl of ramen call up another 9 recipes.  And some of those require another layer of recipes below that.  I was in project planning heaven!

I full on geeked out and spent Christmas morning plotting out how all the recipes interlinked, and we realised this was going to be a fabulous effort to execute.

And then we sat on it.

Then in 2017 Chef’s Table did an episode on Ivan Ramen, and we remembered we had the book, and we remembered we really wanted to  make some Jewish American Japanese food.  And we promised we would take a week to make some delicious noodles.

But we’d already planned to holidays in 2018…so maybe 2019?

Finally, about a month ago, we fished a couple of chicken carcasses out of the freezer and trimmed all the fat off them before we made a chicken sweetcorn stock.  The fat went back into the freezer and waited.

Then on Friday the 20th of September 2019 we used that chicken fat to make schmaltz.

It was the start of a beautiful thing.

Saturday the 21st of September

Traditionally ramen is all pig and fish.  The introduction of chicken is very much Ivan playing with his Jewish American roots.  It’s schalmtz.  It’s chicken soup.  It’s adding rye flour to the noodles (more on that later).

So on Saturday we made the purest chicken stock we have ever made.  It’s just chicken.  No herbs, no aromatics, no salt.  Just a chicken.

Well, a boiling hen to be precise.  Complete with head and feet much to our butcher’s evident delight.  Did make the stock look a little horror story at times.

THE CLAW!

Monday the 23rd of September

We were supposed to be making Dashi, but we couldn’t source the ingredients.  So that’s our one short cut, the dashi (fish stock) was from a powdered mix.

But enough of what we couldn’t do!

We made Pork Belly Chashu, which is pork belly cooked for 3 hours in a soy, sugar, ginger, garlic sauce.

We made Katsoubishi salt, which is ground, baked katsoubushi (shaved dried bonito (fish)) combined with salt

We made Sofrito, which, bizarrely, is a more Spanish/Italian fried vegetable base.  It’s apples, onions, garlic, ginger, tons of oil, and an incredibly low temperature for 6 hours.

This was actually the recipe we had the most problems with.  The temperature stated was definitely too low, and an instruction to uncover at the three hour mark was definitely missing.  But we got there eventually.

We also made Omu Raisu, but that was dinner.  It was rice, sofrito, peas and huge amounts of ketchup.  Then we covered it with simple omelette and more ketchup.  It was so incredibly Japanese.

Tuesday the 24th of September

Obviously, we didn’t just cook during our staycation.  We also went out and experienced all the local venues we’d never quite managed to make.  We went to The Blue Glass for lunch, and then trundled down the street to Beer Fly.  Fortunately we got all the cooking before we started on the wine.

Using a load of pork trimmings from the butchers (which we don’t think they charged us for) we rendered down some pork fat.

We made some Menma, which are just lightly pickled bamboo shoots.  And I would eat these for days.

And we made “Roasted” garlic.  This was neither roasted nor fully descriptive of how amazing this was.  This wasn’t required for the core ramen recipe, but did support some of the extras.  It was also utterly worth the continuous care and attention it required over a full 2 hours of cooking.

It was oil and garlic. Cooked at a temperature where the oil starts to bubble, but the garlic doesn’t fry.  The end result is garlic infused oil, and garlic cloves soft enough to mash with a spoon.

For dinner we made Breakfast Yakisoba, which was egg noodles, vegetables, Pork Belly Chashu, fried egg, and a little bit of a konbu and bonito stock.

Wednesday the 25th of September

We made Shio Tare (sofrito combined with salt water) and Shoyu-Sofrito Tare (sofritio combined with soy sauce, sake and mirin). We also baked some bicarbonate of soda.  Not just for laughs, but because it’s a simple substitute for kansui powder which adds the alkalinity to the noodles.  We also slow cooked some tomatoes to semi-dry them.

Enough about that boring stuff though.

We also made the best sandwich to ever exist. A Chashu Cubana.

First you make a garlic mayonnaise using mayonnaise (shop bought I’m ashamed to say), raw garlic,  and garlic oil and roasted garlic from Tuesday.  This gets spread on a subway roll (or ciabatta if your us.  Again, scandalously shop bought).

Topped with Chashu, ham, gruyere, and sliced pickles.

Then the outside of the sandwich is spread with pork fat and the whole thing is fried.

We went to a FatCap Smokehouse for dinner.  So it was a strong diet day for us.

Thursday the 26th of September

Crunch day today.  Everything comes together to form one delicious bowl of ramen.

We made a lunch of menma, chashu and silken tofu.

We made half cooked eggs and let them soak in the reserved Chashu cooking liquid.

We made noodles! Toasted rye noodles! 

Dan utterly kicked ass at this.  I most mostly just an extra pair of hands.

I cannot stress enough how awesome Dan was with the noodles.

Then we made Ramen.

This brought together chicken fat, pork fat, shio tare, katsuobishi salt, double soup (a 50:50 combination of chicken stock and dashi), toasted rye noodles, menma, pork belly chashu, and half cooked eggs.

It was glorious.

We went to Bears and Tales to celebrate.

Any excuse.

Rest of the week

We played around with the remaining ingredients to make Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Mazeman and Roasted Garlic Mazeman.

We made some more noodles, this time Rye Fat Noodles, which we used to make Toasted Sesame and Spicy Chilli Tsukeman, and Four- Cheese Mazeman (which I actually didn’t like).

Then there was lots of us just making stuff up.

We also made two frozen desserts.  The first was a tomato sorbet, which used the slow roasted tomatoes and I’d always planned to make.

The second was the Lemon Cream Ice with a touch of salt.  I didn’t plan on making this until after we made the ramen, walked a half hour into town, had a vodka martini, and I still had fat on my palate.

Palate cleanser required.  Palate cleanser delivered.

 

Pesky Dips

Well I started the weekend with a bit of malicious cooking.  Dan had been repeatedly telling me that we had a whole load of parsley in the greenhouse.

So I wiped it all out in a single sweep; Parsley oil.   Blanch a small shrub of parsley, blend with a 50:50 blend of olive oil and vegetable oil then run through… well we used a wet clean hanky, but I believe the usual method is to strain it through damp muslin.

Then I continued the theme by being accidentally malicious.  I inquired about the quantity some frozen broadbeans we had in the freezer, and it turns out Dan is…dissatisfied with how his broadbeans are currently doing.

Seems I opened some pretty raw wounds there.

So anyway, using a combination of elderly broadbeans and some spare soya beans that were knocking around we made Broad Bean Crostini with Parmesan and Parsley Oil.

It is just the mashed beans combined with some lemon juice, olive oil, and Parmesan, spread on a bit of toasted ciabatta and topped with a pouched egg and some parsley oil.

Remarkably good summer lunch.

We were then joined by H&S who were on their way back from a wedding.

A wedding where a significant number of guests, and the groom, had Michelin stars.  I am so glad they didn’t tell me this until after we had fed them.  I suspect I would have freaked out and over elaborated.

But instead we continued in blissful ignorance and served them a full spread of delicious pescatarian friendly dips, crudites and three different breads.

We made Lemony Hummus, Beetroot Hummus, Baba Ganoush, Olive and Walnut Tapenade, Mackerel Pate and Hot Artichoke Dip.

Dan made a Focaccia, a Sourdough and a Rye Ale Bread.

Two things of note here.

One: People will be worryingly thankful if you cater for their various dietary requirements.  Seriously. What does everyone else do to guests?

Two: The Hot Artichoke dip is outstandingly delicious and outstandingly retro. Feel we missed a trick by not also serving a blue cheese dip with it.

For dessert we made a very silly raspberry type sundae thing.  It was elderflower sorbet (elderflower cordial from last week and sugar syrup), a raspberry syrup, a whipped cream- creme patisserie mix, and some elderflower short bread biscuits.

The creme patisserie worked a lot better this week.  I used the small le creuset (aka the custard pan).  I don’t know why I ever dared to deviate.

Lunch the next day was Dhal with Crispy Sweet Potatoes (although we did make this in advance).

Following the departure of H&S we embarked on a new potato based cooking spree.  Basically Dan has gown many small (and not so small) waxy tubers.  And now we must consume them.

We started with the traditional Spanish dish of Patas Bravas.  Which were delicious and had the added bonus of making our own mayonnaise.

Don’t know why, but I really like making mayonnaise. Fun with emulsions.

Also we can’t rank the Felicity Cloake “How to cook perfect…” series enough.  We even got the book.

Then we made New potato, spring onion & Montgomery cheddar quiche.  This was doubly exciting because, firstly we already have a booking at The Hand and Flowers in October, so it was fun to get a feel for their style.

Secondly, we ain’t in London.  It’s not like we can mosey down to Neal’s Yard and spend all our money.  Sourcing a particular cheese means a fairly intensive google search, a open top ride around the Bedfordshire countryside in the glorious sunshine, and the discovery of an excellent little farm shop where we will definitely be buying our Christmas cheese.  It was hard work, but the tart was seriously tasty.

Just a few notes on the Tart.  Reading the comments below the recipe we made a few changes.  We doubled the pastry quantities and the potatoes, but not the filling.  Then we made two tarts rather than one.  It worked perfectly.

 

 

 

 

 

Pot-TAY-to, Pot-TAH-to

The theme for this week is beetroot, new potatoes, and mild terror.

The first two are pretty self explanatory.  We have an allotment.  There will be gluts.

The last is due to a visit from The Grandmother.

The Grandmother has not visited since we first moved in about 9 years ago.  The Grandmother has also provided not a insignificant portion of the monies for kitchen  (more bank of Mum of Dad, rather than bank of Mum and Dad).

The kitchen that is now complete (I feel we failed to mention that).

So we kinda needed to show off.

She was accompanied by one of my cousins.  Not just any cousin either.  The cousin responsible for gifting me my beloved Nopi – a book I had never heard about at the time.

So obviously we had use Nopi.  It was only polite really.

We made a Pistachio and Pine Nut-crusted Halibut with Wild Rocket and Parsley Vichyssoise.

This was particularly good because you can make the nut crust and soup in advance, so you only have to roast the fish with an audience.

Plus this time I didn’t melt a sieve in the process.  A huge success.

Dan also made some bread rolls to go with it.  Because you need carbs to go with your potato based soup.

This was followed a few hours later by a slightly less successful round of cakes.

We made a Victoria sponge and we filled it with creme patisserie and gooseberry compote.  From home grown gooseberries no less.

Unfortunately the sponge came out a little dry (blame the new oven!), and I managed to split the creme pat (blame the new hob!) – although this last one was recoverable.  So basically we made a rather delicious filling for a pretty unimpressive cake.

Fortunately Dan had planned a back up and made a Jamaican/Rum/Ginger cake, which is an easy River Cottage recipe.

The Grandmother even went back for seconds!

Less preformative cooking took the form of Lentils and Beets with Salsa Verde, and Papas Arrugadas (or Mojo Potatoes as we call them).

The first time we made the mojo potatoes they were for work lunches, and the garlic was so strong that Dan felt he had to eat them outside.  They are eyewateringly garlicky. Each sauce contains a whole bulb of raw garlic.

Weirdly the veggie salsa verde contains no garlic, but still packs an ample punch.  It consists of two tbsp of capers, 2 tbsp cornchicons, the juice of half a lemon, some EVOO, and plenty of mint, parsley and basil.

There are so many things missing, but it is really lovely!

Finally we get to the section where I just messed around with new potatoes and new ways of cooking new potatoes.

First we tried a very simple steaming recipe.  We started by steaming some potatoes.  Then we put a bowl with a few slightly oiled chicken breasts on top of that, and let it steam some more.  Then we added a frankly ludicrous number of spring onion batons (another glut) and continued steaming.  Once we were convinced both the chicken and potatoes were cooked we made up a broth using the chicken juices and some of the steaming water.

We dressed it with a little chopped spring onions and black pepper.

And it was absolutely excellent.  I know I can sometimes be a bit of  spice queen, but this was a proper celebration of simple flavours.

We should do this more often.

That said, we immediately embarked on a roast potato/smoked meat/garlic cream extravaganza.

The potatoes are boiled, smashed on a oiled baking tray, and then roasted until crisp and golden.  Then we combined a crushed clove of garlic, some parsley and basil, with a small pot of creme fraiche (although ricotta or cream cheese  would also work), and spooned it on top of potatoes.  We finished it with a curl of prosciutto.

It is a very fancy version of jacket potatoes with cheese and bacon.  Unnecessarily fancy.

Fun though.

Mutton dressed with Cauliflower

The word of the week is “cauliflower”.

It was supposed to be “mutton”, and I suppose that is a very close second, but cauliflowers kinda won on variety if nothing else.

It started with me googling uses for black cardamon pods (we had to buy a whole bag once).

And that led me to a recipe for Kashmiri Gobi Sabji, which both sounded delicious, and talked about  black cardamon pods in a really informative way.

What it lacked in visuals, it more than made up for by being absolutely delicious.

Genuinely going to be doing this one again.

Unfortunately this left us with half a large cauliflower to play with.

So we used that to make a rather nice smokey cheese frittata which gave us an opportunity to try another new ingredient -scamorza, which is a essentially a smoked mozzarella. Dan liked it, but mostly it reconfirmed that I am utterly unmoved by smoked cheese.

Now.  Just before we get to the main Mutton event, I have to explain that I was presented with a surprise cauliflower.  Turns out someone had been growing cauliflower on their allotment.

No. Wait.  That’s not quite true.

I was aware there were cauliflowers plants being grown, but..er…they don’t usually come to much.  Maybe a few florets?  Certainly not this:

Based on this outstanding success, clearly I had to include it in dinner.

Fortunately I had about 7 hours of cooking to decide what to do.

Turns out it takes quite a long time to cook a 5kg mutton leg.  And it was a beautiful spice encrusted mutton leg marinated for 48 hours.

And oh sweet zombie Jesus was the mutton delicious.

It isn’t lamb.  It isn’t beef.  But possibly it is closer to beef than is lamb.

We served it with cumin roasted potatoes and cauliflower.

Then we dipped bread in the meat juices.

Then we dipped more bread in the meat juices.

Then we became slightly distracted by the meat juices and stopped eating the meat.

The next few days we did what every sensible household does with the left overs of a roast, and we made it into sandwiches.

With home made sourdough bread.

And home made, home grown, red onion chutney.

Because of course we did.

Burnt Sheep

Continuing with the cooking-food-with-fire theme, we decided to put some of our lamb collection to the test and throw a whole lamb shoulder on the barbie.

This a proper long slow cook from Fire Food, keeping the lamb going for about six hours on a super chill 120ºC – 130ºC.  There were also some unpeeled onions cooked next to the coals for a couple of hours.  And a few large red chillies toasted over a direct heat whilst the lamb was resting.

But mostly the whole afternoon was keeping a casual eye on the temperature, and occasionally basting the lamb with an apple juice and vinegar mixture.  The onions and chillies got chopped in yoghurt with tahini, honey, and lemon juice.  Which became the dressing for the lamb wraps.

Obviously the lamb is pretty heavily rubbed down with spices, but there was nothing really very exotic in there.  The lamb did most the heavy lifting.

Outside of the setting fire to frolicking baby sheep, it been a pretty unremarkable week in the kitchen.  We’re still moving in and forgetting where we carefully organised.

We made an extremely unphotogenic butternut squash lasagne and an equally unphotogenic, but slightly less delicious attempt at a Parmigiana.

Then we made an attempt at trying to make butternut soup a little bit more exciting by making it Thai – red curry paste, coconut milk.  Stuff like that.

Then we tried to get clever by making the fresh coriander influence on Thai cuisine into a pesto.

It mostly tasted of garlic.

Delicious garlic.

But garlic non the less.

 

Greedy Guinea Pig Club On Fire

Daniel has returned from Wales, at least for a couple of months, so I thought we’d dive straight in with a Greedy Guinea Pig Club.

Usually Dan would like a little breathing space, but this was cooking with fire and thus everything was forgiven.  We also benefited from it being a scorchingly hot day.  Plans had to change during the week from “we can BBQ in rain and people can eat indoors” to “we need to put up a gazebo to protect people from the sun”.

This was novel for a planned BBQ. The gods of British weather do not usually roll this way.

A lovely day for Mexican themed BBQ for 8.  And a real demonstration of how well the new kitchen design works.  We managed to make swift work of much of the cooking by being able to work together seamlessly.  Dan’s new prep area really stops us from falling over each other.

We started with a Tequila Bloody Mary – or a Bloody Maria as it should be called.  Unusually for us we actually hedged on this recipe.  We were uncertain about it’s use of orange juice and a blended onion, so we only made a half quantity and used the rest of the tequilla to make the Difford’s Guide version.

This was the correct call, as Difford’s version was vastly superior.  Always trust in Difford.

With everything else we at least stuck to the ingredients list.  And made a big table of food

We’ll start with the Jerk Chicken, which everyone was very nice about.  We feel we overcooked it slightly, but that’s on us not the recipe.

The recipe itself was an allspice, spring onion, ketchup and lime based marinade over boneless, skin-on chicken thighs.  Fortunately a friendly butcher did all the boning for us.  A little less to do the night before the meal.

The real start of the show was the Mexican Barbecued Pork Belly.  Here we definitely deviated from the instructions.  The recipe said to cook for two hours over a medium direct heat, and we disagreed.

We both felt that indirect, longer, lower, heat would be much more beneficial for a nice fatty piece like pork belly.  Doing it like this meant we could safely take the meat to the point where the fat rendered.

Plus, as much as we liked the look of the general menu, we were both slightly suspicious of the chef.  Posing as he was in front of a gas barbecue.  Clearly this man couldn’t be trusted around charcoal.

Our messing was successful and the pork was considered “excellent”.  This backed up by the almost complete absence of leftovers from the more than 2 kg joint.

Alongside this considerable quantity of protein, we proffered a large helping of guacamole, some refried beans, a coriander and onion salsa and a hot chilli sauce.

We also borrowed from the Levi Roots cookbook to make a pumpkin rice.  Although we did massively cheat here and used the rice cooker.  This made it much easier from a timing point of view.

We did get complimented on how nice the rice was.  All credit goes the rice maker.  We can not overstate how wonderful these devices are.  We’re on our second now, but the first lasted for more than ten years with very regular use.  And it was the non stick surface that went rather than any of the electronics.  Outstandingly good.

However, the most successful side dish was, by far, the barbecued corn salad.   Because of the time of year Waitrose was the only place selling unpeeled corn-on-the-cobs, but it was utterly worth it.  The extra step on barbecuing the corn in the husk added all sort of smokey flavour to the corn.

Combined with a soaked and sliced dried ancho chilli, a sliced red onion, 200g of cherry tomatoes, some parsley, and some lime juice, this was an excellent dish.  One we’ll definitely be repeating when the sweetcorn comes in on the allotment.

Thanks need to go to D & S for stepping up and providing desserts.  Tiramisu and Banoffee Pie were a lovely sweet note at the end of the evening.

All in all it was a lovely afternoon with excellent company.  Exactly what we needed to get us back into cooking for fun, rather than for the freezer.

 

Stripey Food

The kitchen is so nearly done.  It’s all signed off, 90% painted, and we are starting to move everything back in.

In the process of which we begin to wonder if we really need four frying pans, and if we possibly have too much tupperware. (the answers are no, and yes, respectively)

Dan is still in Wales and thus I am still living out of the freezer during the week.

This has led to a near continuous topping up of freezer meals.  In this case American Meat Loaf and Macaroni Peas.

Both are silly easy.

The meat loaf is just gently fried onions, celery, green pepper and garlic, mixed with beef mince, breadcrumbs and an egg to bind.  Separately half a tin of chopped tomatoes is mixed this 4 tbsp of ketchup.  Half of this red mess goes into the meat mix and get moulded into a loaf type shape in a lightly greased roasting tin.  A little tench is made in the top, and that is where the rest of the red mess goes.  This is actually the little detail that makes this one of our favourite meatloaf recipes.

This all goes in oven at 180°C for an hour and a half.  Rest for 10 minutes before slicing.  It is perfectly possible, if you are a morning person, to make this before your wife even gets out of bed.  Plus it gives you an opportunity to play with the new food processor when making the bread crumbs.

Yes we bought a shiny new food processor.  The previous one being a terrible false economy.  Less of a food processor, more a centrifuge.

So bad it went in the bin rather than to the charity shop.

Weekend cooking remains a little more showy.  Especially with the large quantities of lamb in the freezer.

We started with the River Cottage Roast Breast of Lamb with Lemon and Apricots, although only half the recipe, since half a sheep only comes with one breast.  We also replaced the fennel (Dan says “yuck”) with a few sticks of celery.

It was utterly delicious.  This lamb is really, really nice.

Obviously, with all those Moroccan elements going on, we served it with couscous.

The next day we used the left overs to make Scotch Broth Salad.  Although, being greedy little post-gym creatures, we made the full amount and scoffed it all in one sitting.

We’ve made this one a lot, and it continues to deliver.

Sadly the weekend ended on a little bit of a disappointment.  As the final bake in the Dan’s-belated-birthday-chocolate-extravaganza we made Nigella’s Chocolate Cheesecake.  And it was not very good.

Bit boring really.

Although Dan did manage to struggle through and eat it all himself.

That was last weekend.

This weekend we have been mostly playing with the griddle pan.

We have a lovely South African recipe for lamb loin chops (although we intend to use lamb steaks), that required them to be griddled.  We’d heard various rumours about induction hobs being a bit difficult with the griddle pan, so we were a bit hesitant.

By the way, we weren’t counting the griddle pan in our four frying pans.

So instead of leaping straight in with dead animal, we decided to give the griddle a test run with something slightly different.

We made Grilled Peach Salad with Bresaola and a creamy dressing.  And it was utterly delicious.

Salt and sweet is a fairly fool proof flavour combination and high temperatures always do fabulous things to fruit sugars.

With confidence in the griddle pan restored we embarked on the Lamb Loin Chops and Butternut with Tangy BBQ Sauce from Around the World in 120 Recipes.

This was both very easy, and very tasty.  The lamb get marinated it oil, garlic and rosemary.  The squash get cut into long twelfths (deseeded, but skin on), tossed in oil, salt, cayenne, and cumin seeds, and roasted for about 45 minutes in a 180°C oven.

Then there is the BBQ sauce.  This is lots (500g) of chopped red onions cooked nice and slow in a frying pan.  While those are softening, two halved tomatoes are oiled and charred all over in the griddle pan.  Once done these should be blackened all over and the skin should be easy to lift off with tongs.

Once the onions are soft add 1.5 tbsp of tomato puree, 100ml of red wine vinegar and a couple of bay leaves.  Let this reduce a little before adding 500ml of chicken stock, 5 tbsp of runny honey and the charred, skinned tomatoes.  Give everything a stir and break the tomatoes up a bit before reducing the sauce vigorously for about 20 minutes.

When ready get the griddle pan super hot and cook the lamb for three minutes on one side, then two on the other.

The lamb was a little overdone for my taste (induction can get the griddle pan hotter than gas could), but it was good enough lamb not to matter.

It is wonderful to be back in the kitchen.

 

Lamb-ageddon Begins

So the baby sheep and grown-up sheep have arrived and we’ve broken into our still incomplete kitchen in order to praise them with delicious sauces.

It’s what they would have wanted.

We started with an old classic of rolled chump chop with a little greek salad.  Sadly we didn’t take any photos of this, but we can assure you that the lamb was fabulous, and the brand new ovens work extremely well.

We keep being a little taken aback by how quick they heat up.  We’re not used to this level of efficiency.

However we did take pictures of the devilled lambs hearts we made for lunch.

We hadn’t done this River Cottage Recipe in ages, and it was just as tasty as we remembered (if a little sweeter, because I added too much redcurrant jelly).  For those of you pulling a face at eating offal…don’t be so soft, this recipe is delicious!  If you kill an animal you should probably eat the whole thing, not just the aesthetically pleasing bits.

Following that exciting adventure in carnivore land we returned to the reassuring flavours of goat’s cheese and carbs.  We do so love this particular Leon recipe, although we did use a mixture of rocket and mizuna (from the greenhouse) instead of keeping totally to the letter of the law.

Continuing the belated Dan-birthday-chocolate-cake extravaganza, we made a Cloud Cake.  This is a ridiculous flour-less, raising agent-less, 75% cream, construction.

It vanished very quickly at work.  Which was a good thing, because by lunch the base was beginning to go soggy.  Definitely not one for storage.

Greedy Guinea Pig Club Updates

Proposed date of 29th June:

Tequila Bloody Mary (Bloody Maria)

Jerk Chicken

Mexican Barbecued Pork Belly

Guacamole

Refried Beans

Coriander & Onion Salsa

Hot Chilli Sauce

Barbecued Corn Salad

Who’s in?

 

Kitchen Update

So in news that won’t surprise anyone who’s actually had a new kitchen installed; the kitchen isn’t complete yet.

What has been done is mostly fabulous.  But it’s taking a lot longer than promised.

Last week hit a bit of a climax when I unleashed my inner Margo Leadbetter and wrote a strongly worded e-mail.  Dan has apparently been reading it aloud to wincing colleagues.  I’m not sure if I should be flattered or not.

By incomplete I mean it’s fully usable, it just hasn’t been signed off and is still a bit full of grot and grime.  Oh, and the plinths haven’t been reinstalled yet.  So I don’t have my fabulous plinth drawers yet.  I fought hard for those bad boys.  And by fought hard, I mean I threw all my toys out of the pram.

It was up there with an extractor fan for immovable kitchen design features.

Oh, and we have a dishwasher now.  I know, I know, we already had a dishwasher, but :

a. He prefers to be called “the washing up fairy” thankyouverymuch.

b. Having somewhere to store dirty items gives us so much work surface back.

c. He’s currently very distracted by having his own special prep area complete with very expensive chopping board. (God, we are such DINKIES).

So we’ve worked through all the freezer meals.  We’ve purchased ready meals.  We’ve used messrs Deliveroo and JustEat far to much.  We’ve resisted using the kitchen until now. But.  Yeah. It’s us.

So we made a chocolate cake.  Just a simple one.  A little tray bake chocolate gingerbread.

And it was lovely.  And that was last weekend.

So this weekend we made another chocolate cake.

And a nice simple one pot chicken, squash and borlotti bean dish (we only had to buy some honey!).

Oh, and some cheese souffles.  With a spinach and walnut salad.

Turns out you actually can’t keep us out of the kitchen.

Although the bread rolls are Paul Hollywood Ready to Bake so we’re not quite back to full strength.

Greedy Guinea Pig Club Updates

We’d like to do both June and July clubs.  Both with a bit of an alfresco dining feel, although June will be more at the shorts and flip flops end of the spectrum, whilst July will be a bit more floral skirts and linen trousers (although obviously no actual dress code will be inflicted).

June will be a big ass Tex-Mex inspired BBQ on a Saturday afternoon.  Maybe the 29th? Jerk Chicken. Pork Belly. Guacamole. Refried Beans.  This is pretty open.  Feel free to bring interesting burgers/sausages if you want.  The BBQ will be hot so why not?

July will be a bit more of a structured affair with salmon, chicken, and salads.  Probably for 8-10 people.  Date to be set.

Other News

I may have bought a sheep.

Well, half a sheep and half a lamb.  Reared less that 10 miles away, so I’m feeling pretty good about this from ethics point of view.

So there will be plenty of lamb and mutton in the future.

Doomsday Kitchen Preppers

I have a fridge freezer in my dining room.

Last Friday we cooked almost 50 portions of food, which all went into said freezer.

I have discovered some food in my cupboards went out of date in 2012 (possibly they moved house with us).

I have no idea why we bought 5 litres of glycerine, nor how we used about 3 litres of said glycerine.

I am slightly alarmed by the size of our bake-ware collection.

But not so alarmed that I probably won’t buy more.

The evidence is all pointing to us (finally) doing something with our terrible kitchen.

We know our kitchen is terrible because people have told us so.  Which is both rude, and accurate.

But on the 3rd of April the terrible kitchen will be no more and will be replaced with a much shinier and better designed kitchen.  Sadly this doesn’t all happen on one day so we’ll be sans oven and hob for about three weeks.

Hence the massive cook off last Friday.  It was the easy big hitters like mozzarella and tomato risotto, and butternut squash lasagne.  Easy things we can do in bulk and we know freeze well.

One of the reasons we’ve been quite so lax of the actual food cooking front these last few weeks is because we’ve been dealing with kitchen designers. Kitchen designers who looked a little startled when confronted with a requirements list slightly larger than the actual kitchen.

Of course we wrote a requirements list.  They are lucky we didn’t write a full requirements document full of “shoulds” and “shalls”.

Did feel pretty work-like signing off on the final design though.

On Wednesday we cooked the very last meal we will ever cook in the terrible kitchen.  This rendered slightly easier than usual as we’d already cleared loads of stuff away and thus had more surface space to play with.

We had two eggs left in the fridge and half a pack of panko breadcrumbs.  We also had a four pork streaks in the freezer.

This spelt out Pork Schnitzels to us.

So we paired it with a very quick sauerkraut made by frying some onion and then cooking down 600g of sliced red cabbage and two sliced apples with a couple of tsp of brown sugar and 60ml of white wine vinegar for about 30 minutes.

Which is just about the right amount of time to allow Dan to flatten, bread and fry the pork fillets.

I shouldn’t be too mean about the terrible kitchen.  We’ve cooked some wonderful things in it despite it’s terribleness.

So raise a glass to our brown, Wickes-cheapest-range, poorly designed, 8.71 m² (94 sqft) terrible kitchen.

We’ll see you on the other side.