BBQ Fun Times – 28/08/2016

One of the lovely things available for Settlers at Green man was being able to borrow a BBQ.  So we had a lovely Dan-cooked meal midweek, full of new veggie ideas.

This was supposed to be veggie BBQ, but Dan walked into our butchers and saw an irresistible sausage deal.  Insert own joke here.

This is going to be a very picture heavy post.

And that is one laden tray of goodies to go on the BBQ.

The balls of silver are sweet potatoes, rubbed down with dried chillies, ground cumin and salt as suggested by Jamie Oliver.

The red peppers are also shop bought.  We can’t seem to get our peppers to ripen (hence the pile of green as well).  Both the red peppers and a couple of the sweetcorn are just getting cooked in advance of some other recipes for Monday.  More of that to come.

Daniel is the BBQ king and did some fabulous cooking.

The finished goods!

Nope. No idea what was more interesting than sausages.

We discovered the best way to serve BBQ’d tomatoes is to make a quick bruschetta.  The toasted bread gets rubbed down with a clove of garlic, drizzled with oil and then topped with the tomatoes.

We are definitely doing that one again.

Other than adding some lime to the sweet potato the rest was just the standard over eating that accompanies most BBQ’s.  Just, you know, with vegetables.

Salad All The Way – 27/08/2016

Bit of a pescetarian day today.  Two of the lovely people we were camping with at Green Man are pescy (or as R’s mum calls it; Vegaquarium) and it may have rubbed off a little.

Also there is craploads of veg on the allotment ready to be eaten, and limited time to do it in.

Salad number 1 was the last recipe from the “Round the World” Barcelona section; Goats’ Cheese, Confit Tomatoes & Basil Oil.  Sadly, we think it was also the most disappointing.

The yellow things are tomatoes we swear, it’s just Dan grew golden cherry tomatoes.

The recipe required us to cook the tomatoes in a basil/chilli/garlic infused oil, then blitz a huge pile of basil leaves with the oil.  Then serve the whole lot with a pile of rocket and some goats’ cheese.

It was definitely the weakest recipe in the section.

Fortunately we had a big favourite for dinner.  This is our take on Panzanella, an Italian bread salad.

We’ve tried a few different Panzanella salad recipes and this remains our absolute favourite.  Although we generally serve it with tinned tuna we have tarted it up occasionally with tuna steaks to great success.  It really is dependent on good tomatoes and good crusty bread.  Fortunately we have a greenhouse full of vine-ripened tomatoes and I have a husband who will make one of these first thing in the morning.

To be honest I’d expected him to use the bread maker, but, yay, upgrade!

We’re halving our usual recipe to feed two so we’ll only be using 50g of the bread so expect to see more of it over this weekend.

The bread got torn into chucks and baked in a reasonably hot oven until golden.  Once the bread was cool it got combined with 200g of ripe chopped tomatoes (home grown obviously), half a finely sliced red onion (also home grown), a quarter of a cucumber roughly chopped (look at Dan’s little smug face!), 25g Kalamata olive, half a tbsp. of capers and half a bunch of basil (we have a window sill full of basil).

Then we whisked together 2 tbsp each of olive oil and red wine vinegar, a crushed garlic clove and a pinch of sugar before pouring it all over the salad, giving it a mix and abandoning it for an hour.

Just before serving we stirred in a can of tuna.  We use tuna in brine, but admittedly this is partially for the love of the kitten.  Bolly loves the brine we drain off.

A well deserved firm favourite.

Griddled Lamb with Bulgur Wheat Salad – 26/08/2016

We would like to say that dinner tonight was due to us staring longingly at the sheep on the Welsh hills, but it’s really just pure coincidence.

Although we did see plenty of fluffy white sheep during our week away (along with a few of what we think were highland cattle and a couple of donkeys.  Not sure about the eating on a donkey…).

We’ve been at Green man festival for a week and the food has been amazing.  Since I cut my teeth at Reading and V Festival (V Festival was on my school route.  Don’t judge) decent, nay good, food at a festival is somewhat novel.   A full week at Reading would probably have given me scurvy.

I had a venison salad.  Twice.

Salad.  At a music festival.  Totally different world.

Once we got back there was a quick change around, a quick sleep and then Dan sodded off back to Wales.  Intent on undoing all the good work we’d done for their tourist industry via the medium of very loud bangs.

On Friday Mama Lowe came to stay, taking me shopping to replace the coat I’d foolishly left in the car following my disagreement with a tree.

The really nice thing about this recipe was I could get the lamb on the marinade and make the salad in advance, so that when Dan stumbled through the door late Friday evening, the only thing we had to do was griddle the lamb.

This recipe feeds four.  I had one portion for Thursday dinner, and then we had the remaining three portions Friday night, with a nice soft red.

We started by marinating four lamb steaks. Two tsp of cumin seeds, one tsp of ground coriander, two tbsp. of chopped fresh mint leaves, and one tbsp. each of honey and olive oil.  Mix it up, swish the lamb around in it a bit, then cover and leave in the fridge for an indefinite period of time, whilst your menu plan changes around you.

Ahem.

For the salad we placed 200g of bulgur wheat in a bowl (couscous would also work) and poured 300ml of hot chicken stock over it .  This got covered and set aside for 20 minutes while we sorted the rest of the ingredients.

Most of this time was spent trying to chop 50g of dates.  Dates act as a collective and do not like to be separated.  They are a sticky mess and chopping up 15g of pistachio nuts afterwards felt almost relaxing by comparison.  We also add the zest and juice of a lemon and finally 50g of shredded beet tops, taking care to remove any thick or red bits – the red bits make it taste like beetroot, which isn’t really what we were aiming for here.

Baby spinach would also be a suitable green, but we had beet tops available.

It went down an absolute storm.  Before we started Mama Lowe made some apologies about not being able to clear her plate due to reduced appetite…but all she left was a little bit of lamb.  Which was disposed of into a delighted Bolly.

Food partially eaten as sleepy Dan forgot to take a photo until revived by delicious wine.

Brinner– 12/08/2016

This will be a very short post as this is just food slotting between things.

I got back from Kansas (work).  Dan got back from Wales (also work).  We have a few days at home before we bugger off back to Wales for a music festival.

We’re sure it’ll be fantastic; we’re just feeling a trifle fraught.

As you may have guessed by the blog title, we are having Breakfast for Dinner.  We were supposed to make Pancakey goodness for Mama Lowe and the Bratling last weekend, but we went to the pub instead.

Fortunately all the ingredients kept till this weekend , so we had Oaty Buttermilk Pancakes for a couple of Dinners.  With home-grown blueberries and lashings of maple syrup.

Those small green things are cucamelons.  They are a cross between (guess!) a cucumber and a melon.  And they are excellent in a gin and tonic.

What more do you want?

For lunches we’ve been at the Nopi again.  Green Beans with Freekeh and Miso in order to use at least some of the green beans whilst they are fresh.

We’ve not used Freekeh before and it was a bit of an ordeal to track down.  El had to visit three separate health food (witchcraft) shops in order to track it down, and we’re not sure bulgur wheat wouldn’t have done the job.

Anyone who mentions that actually Waitrose stocks it, will get a brief rant about how the nearest Waitrose is a 56 minute walk away and will be forced to stand awkwardly next to El as she sits on the stairs and cries into her glass of wine.

Just don’t.

The salad combines freekeh, cooked with as mirepoix, shallots, roasted with nanami togarashi, roasted shiitake mushrooms, edamame beans, French beans, pea shoots and a miso based dressing.

Oh and a slight sprinkling of nigella seeds.

Nanami Togarashi is a Japanese spice mixture with a bit of a kick to it.  We used to add it to quite a few things, but it especially nice on roasted salmon with a bowl of noodles.  This recipe had defiantly inspired us to start adding it to more things again.

Anything with a Japanese tinge to it really.  Sushi rice is definitely getting a dusting.

The salad itself was quite tasty.  We’re not sure it needed the pea shoots, but the use of all the fresh green flavours with the depth of the mushrooms and miso and the spice from the shallots was a lovely combination.

We’re still not convinced by the Freekeh though.  Also this post turned out longer than we expected.

Weekend Catch up– 5-6/07/2016

We apologise for the lack of pictures in this one, they may appear in some updates.

Technical difficulties.

I welcomed Dan home with a delicious salad.  A delicious salad using an allotment ingredient!

It was actually supposed to use two allotment ingredients, but the lamb’s lettuce died an early death.  That, sadly, is the way of home grown.

It was a Grape, Parma Ham, Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad.

We combined a bag of lamb’s lettuce and a bunch of baby chard (home grown #smugmode), with 12 torn slices of Parma ham, a good couple handfuls of halved black grapes, 100g of Dolcelatte (although other mild blues would work) and a small handful of walnuts.

We then dressed it with a reduced grape juice, balsamic, walnut oil and wholegrain mustard vinaigrette.

For those that care; it was about 100ml of red grape juice reduced by half, a tbsp. of balsamic, 4 tbsp. of walnut oil and a tsp of mustard.

The idea was that the sweetness of the lambs lettuce, grapes and walnuts would contrast nicely with the saltiness of the blue cheese and  Parma ham.  Which it did.

Flavour wise it was brilliant.

What we hadn’t counted on was the Dolcelatte having its own personal gravitational field that caused it to either clump together like the formation of a small cheese based star, or wrap it’s self in layers of Parma ham.

Either way, even distribution of cheese was not achieved.

Friday evening we were joined Mama Lowe and the Bratling for some Spa based madness the following day.  But clearly we had to feed them first.

We went for a dinner of Sesame Sweet and Sour Aubergine  followed by Strawberry and Mascarpone Ice Cream.  Both continue to be marvellous and our guests were pleasantly surprised by the texture from the aubergine.

While we were at the spa Dan did some sterling cooking work and we had Beef Croquettes for dinner.

They worked just as well the second (or third) time, but we were slightly put out by the expression on our guests faces when we said we were serving them with a slaw.

Fortunately it just turned out they had a very narrow concept of slaw.

We need to remember that in Britain slaw is generally that horrible white and orange soggy stuff, bought from the supermarket.  It is an abomination.

Bizarrely the Americans do slaw so much better than us. That’s right.  We are being beaten by the US on vegetables!

They do delicious crunchy slaws, many of which don’t even contain mayonnaise, many are merely dressed with vinaigrette.

Even the traditional carrot, cabbage and mayo coleslaw is a totally different beast if made fresh and with decent mayonnaise.

We think we may have marginally re-educated them, although we think we might have made a bigger impact on the Bratling than Mama Lowe.

Finally we finish with a Lemon Meringue Ice Cream.  It was …interesting.

It’s a weird egg free little recipe that uses whole blended lemons.  This leant it a distinctly marmalade-like flavour.  It was almost too much.

It was marginally redeemed by the suggested accompaniments of a Crisp almond Crumble (a sort of almond based crunchy shortbread) and crumbled meringue.

Still.  We think it’s more likely we’ll sit in front of the TV easting the toppings that the icecream.

Not our best work.

Spanish Fry-Up– 31/07/2016

A very quick one since on Sunday since Dan buggered off back to Wales and I had more tart for dinner.

For lunch we had something called “Fried Eggs, Salt Cod & Black Pudding,” from the Barcelona section again. It is essentially a one pan fry up with Salt Cod taking the place of bacon.

It works rather well.

It certainly works better than bad bacon.

We’d done this recipe once before, so we played pretty fast and loose with the quantities:

“Just use all the remainder of the salt cod.”
“75g of black pudding you say? Shall we just use the whole (230g) packet?”

There also a really serendipitous moment when I was about to get six cherry tomatoes out the freezer and Dan suddenly discovered six beautifully ripe golden cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse.

Summer first!

They do somewhat disintegrate is this recipe, so they are the yellow things that aren’t egg yolks.

This feeds two and is done by frying approximately 100g of well soaked salt cod with a chopped garlic clove in plenty of olive oil until it starts to get a tad crunchy.

Then add as much black pudding as you fancy and a handful of halved cherry tomatoes and cook until done.

Crack in two eggs and swirl around a bit so the white gets everywhere. Add black pepper, then stick in a medium oven until the eggs are cooked to your liking.

Garnish with chives to at least pretend it’s healthy.