Lil Ms Squirrel's Chimichurri Tostadas

It's okay, I'm not going to do 'the singing thing' today, I promise!  But as I still had a huge bundle of parsley in the fridge and I wanted to experiment a bit with the premise of chimichurri sauce, I decided to have a little experiment for today's lunch.

Chimichurri is just like pesto without the cheese and nuts.  Or a green herb sauce if you will.  Salsa verde.  Back to that theme that actually, there are only so many recipes in the world and  the rest are just variations on a theme.

Pretty colours

So starting out with half a huge bunch of parsley, about finely chopped shallot and two fat cloves of garlic, I added 3 tbsp of Waitrose chilli olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, some Maldon salt and a finely diced tomato (you need a decently flavoured one here - none of your tasteless supermarket salad toms thank you very much).

The chilli oil gives a more even heat to the sauce than chilli flakes would which is a good idea if you're not going to blend.  I found the flakes a bit spiky last night.  But then again, sometimes a burst of flavour can be preferable to each mouthful being the same.  Your choice.

Next for the tostadas.  I've been meaning to make these forever since I first laid my hands on my copy of Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple.  But 11 months have passed and despite trying a new recipe every day, I've still almost failed to get round to it.  Even in my adult life, I am metaphorically doing my homework on the bus on the way to school*.

Making round ones is a little bit wasteful but they look good on the plate if you have guests and I believe that the traditional shape is round.  I'm sure real South Americans/Mexicans make them from scratch and so can make them small and round straight away.  I chose the lazy way and started with a big shop-bought flour tortilla and cut circles with a pastry cutter.  In my humble opinion it would be a waste to go to the effort of making lovely soft tortillas and then toast them.  Tried this once, not again.

Miers deep fries her tostadas.  I wish I could do that and still be as slim as she is!  So I adopted my favourite alternative to fried bread-based things.  A squirt of olive Fry-Light and into the oven on 200c (fan) until they go brown and crispy.

A word of warning to dog owners.  Always replace the caps on spray bottles left in the kitchen.  I very nearly had tostadas flavoured with the stuff we use to stop the dogs biting the woodwork as the bottles look the same when you're as blind as a bat and someone (naming no names) has left both of them next to the cooker with the lids off.

Once the tostadas were baked, I topped each one with a spoon of the chimichurri, sprinkled on some feta (closest you'll get to Queso Fresco in deepest Wiltshire) and hey presto.  Lunch.

*I was actually a girly swot at school and always did my homework after tea the night I got it.  How things change.

Lil Ms Squirrel's Cheat's Blinis

There have been accusations in the past that I am rubbish of letting go of things.  Whilst I like to protest that this is untrue, the last couple of days has made me realise that it's time to face up to my denial and admit that I am unable to let go of the Olympic Food Challenge.

It was just nineteen short days in length and yet, here I am two days after, still mourning its passing.  I must adopt a 'Feel the Fear...' approach to this and do some kind of ritual with candles and consign the OFC to a happy chapter in my past.  But for now, there's still a smidgen of caviar in my fridge and it would be a shame to let it go to waste, which is why I found myself troughing on blinis this past lunchtime.

A blini to the uninitiated is a Russian drop scone, made using buckwheat flour and yeast and served with caviar.  You also see it commonly served with prawns and smoked salmon too.  As I had the leftovers from Sunday's Danish open sandwiches to play with, it seemed like the obvious choice for a fast, tasty and posh working-from-home lunch.

Having run out of yeast at the weekend though, I faced the dilemma of whether or not the recipe would work without the extra lift.  Then I remembered an oft-used trick for pancake recipes that require a little extra bubble in them.  Fizzy water.  Or as Miss A calls it 'Funny Water'.  With some baking powder and whipped egg white, this worked a treat giving me soft, light pancakes which were perfect topped with some Philly and the aforementioned caviar and prawns.

And because they originate from Russia, I will plaster a Russian flag on the post because I can.  It's all part of the letting go.  Now I just need to come up with a non-country-specific recipe tomorrow to break the flag-waving habit.  And if I'm struggling to let go of the OFC, how on earth am I going to let go of my own blog in just 43 days time???

This is how I made them.

Makes six blinis (based on a Mary Berry recipe)

• 35g plain flour
• 35g wholemeal flour (use buckwheat if you can get it for the nutty flavour)
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 medium egg, separated
• 55ml skimmed milk, warmed
• 25ml fizzy water
• pinch of table salt



Flag addict alert! Russia

• spray oil

• caviar, prawns, lemon wedges (I forgot this in the pic!) and cream cheese or sour cream to serve

1. Whisk the egg yolk, water and milk together then combine with the flours, salt and baking powder to a smooth batter.
2. Whip the egg white until it forms stiff peaks.  Fold into the batter carefully.  Decant into a measuring jug.
3. Spray a frying pan with the spray oil and heat over a medium heat.  Pour the batter into 2-3 inch diameter circles, spaced 1-2 inches apart.  Cook for two minutes until the bottom is set and and bubbles start to form on the surface.  Carefully flip over and cook for a further minute.  Slide onto a warmed plate and continue cooking until all the batter is used.
4. Serve with the accompaniments.

Olympic Food Challenge - Smörgåsbord Open Sandwiches on Black Bread with Pickled Cucumber - Denmark

It's all over.  This is my final Olympic Food Challenge Post.  The last medal has been contested and the UK won a silver.  I never thought I'd be sad to see the end of the Olympics, but it's been an amazing nineteen days that has bought most of the country together and encouraged me to learn more about the world and have fun whilst doing it.

Nom! is all I have to say about this

Denmark have had an okay games.  With 113 athletes competing in 17 disciplines, they will be heading home tomorrow with two golds, four silvers and three bronzes for their troubles.  And they even managed to swipe a gold medal in the track cycling which is pretty impressive given how well Team GB dominated that domain.

As for the foodie side of things, Denmark is the only place on my list of countries that I've actually been to.  I was about ten and my mother took me to Legoland.  My overriding food memory was of this really posh woman with an awful, horsey voice who used to spend all her time whinnying on about how 'Daddy has a private jet' and 'Daddy has a 40ft yacht' and how 'Tarquin and Ophelia are privately educated, don't you know'.  And yet every day, whilst everyone else stumped up the two Danish Kroner for a packed lunch, she used to save herself a few bob by taking enough food from the Smörgåsbord breakfast table and slipping it into a carrier bag to be consumed later in the day.  She even emptied bowls of rice krispies into bags.  I guess this is why I'm not rich.

Other than that, I remember eating a lovely, red spicy dish with frankfurters in it, potato salad and drinking Apfelsaft which bemused me because it was orange juice and not apple.  We may or may not have had Danish pastries.  We might have had bacon.  But there is nothing that I could put my finger on that I ate that I wanted to make again (25 years does a lot to dull the memory).

Not quite black, but close enough

So, having already tried making Danish pastries on this blog several times (cherry Danish, quick apricot Danish, disaster Danish and Dan Lepard's Amazing Danish), I wanted to try something else.  Before I picked Apple Cake for my Romanian offering, I really wanted to make Aebleskiver which are little apple dough balls from Denmark.  Trouble is, you need the proper pan or you don't get to make them as they come out in little spheres.  A bit of Googling told me there's not much else you can make in the special pan other than Aebleskiver and having already bought a bamboo steamer, I decided to try and keep on the husband's good side and not buy yet more things to clutter up the cupboard with.



Further Googling led me back to Smörgåsbord and a picture of Danish Open sandwiches.  Bingo.  I could get through today by trying a new recipe to satisfy my own blog criteria (however loose they are and how ever much I bend the rules to get through the 366 recipes!) and by making something remotely Danish looking, I'd tick the box on the OFC too.

I chose Dan Lepard's Black Bread recipe as I'd already done his Black Pepper Rye.  I know Scandinavians eat lots of rye bread.  Whether or not Dan's recipe is anywhere near what you'd find in Denmark, I have no idea, but I knew it would work and I'd most likely enjoy it.  And it did.  But I didn't go much on it sliced and buttered as I'd do with normal bread.  However, topped with cream cheese, pickled cucumber, prawns and caviar, the bread really came into its own and the liquorice flavour from the fennel seeds really complimented all the other flavours.

Labelled Elsinore but made in Sweden

I am seriously not a fan of licorice and only went with fennel seeds because I couldn't find my cumin seeds (hubby has been 'tidying' again).  If I make it again, I'll definitely go with the cumin seeds and replace the treacle with honey (as suggested by Dan).

And my new addiction is pickled cucumber.  This was a last minute addition as I suddenly got a bit panicked about what to put on the sandwich.  I already had the caviar and prawns but wondered if I could do two different types.  T'interweb suggested pickled cucumber and pickled herrings.  I found a recipe and made my own cucumber - simple, addictive, making more once this blog is posted.  Sadly(!), Sainzlebobs were all out of pickled herrings.  I was devastated.

So we go out on a high with me having tried some more new stuff, and enjoyed it.  I would like to thank Ewan Mitchell for hosting this challenge and encouraging us to experiment (although I draw the line at SoupTuesday's Deep Fried Duck Tongues).  Do go and read all the other amazing posts too.  You can find links on the Olympic Food Challenge blog.

Bread recipe can be found here (and also in Short and Sweet) and the one for the cucumber is here.

Olympic Food Challenge: Halloumi Parcels - Cyprus

What an immense day!  A world record in the means team cycling (although thanks to the torrential rain breaking the Sky box, I missed it).  Gold and silver in the canoe slalom.  Silver for rowing and judo and another gold in the clay pigeon shoot.  Go, Team GB.

As for the challenge, I ski-ed off-piste today and didn't deliver the previously promised dish from Guinea Bissau.  I was seriously not in a mood to eat tea tonight.  So instead, I opted for a 'trip' to Cyprus and some Halloumi Parcels.  A nice, light meal before an evening slaving away in the kitchen, licking cake bowls.  It's a tough life.

So Cyprus.  Thirteen athletes competing in seven disciplines and like El Salvador from last night, still looking for that first medal of any colour.  Rather sensibly, although they've got a cyclist on their team, they've chosen not to compete in the track cycling.  As one of my Twitter buddies said - why does anyone else bother showing up given that we're so awesome?

Divided by the Turkish part and the Greek part, Cyprus is the third most populated island in the Mediterranean.  The cuisine is influenced by both Turkey and Cyprus and this particular dish is reminiscent of the Turkish borek, but using the local delicacy of Halloumi rather than Feta.  The other slight variation is the inclusion of cottage cheese in the mix.  This is also commonly done in several other countries - such as Serbian Cheese Pie (a big version of borek) whereas Turkish borek tend to just stick to feta alone.

I must confess that ever since I went to Turkey fifteen years ago, I've been slightly obsessed with borek and when I was coming up with my recipe list, desperately researched which countries I could get away with making something similar for.  Good girl that I am, I won't be making the Macedonian version in a few days time - but the need for filo is another excuse to make that other Med favourite of Baklava instead.

Simple to make, quick to cook and packed with flavour.  The Halloumi made a nice change to feta and is far less squeaky on the teeth than when you just grill or pan fry it.  I'd make them again if I had some Halloumi and cottage cheese hanging around.  However given that today is the first time I've ever bought cottage cheese, I doubt I'll be making this variation again for a long time.

Because I love borek, I'll be biased and give this one a gold.  You can find the recipe here.

One other thing, I got a shout out on the Foodies 100 Ten at Ten today.  Big up to Ewan Mitchell and the rest of the Olympic Food Challenge Team who need to share in the glory.

Olympic Food Challenge: Avocat aux Crevettes Senegalaises - Senegal

Day Four of the Olympic Food Challenge.  Wasn't the opening ceremony amazing last night?  Not normally my kind of thing but I twisted the husband's arm and I'm so glad I did.  Aside from the obvious things I could mention like Becks in a speedboat, Daniel Craig and her Maj and Cav's eyelashes, it was just brilliantly bonkers and brilliantly British.  The only disappointment was Macca at the end.  Why, why, why does he just plain refuse to sing The Frog Chorus?  Just think what Danny Boy(le) could've done with that!

Straight from Abigail's Party

The slight tedium of the countries pouring in one by one was punctuated by my running commentary of 'I'm cooking that country and I'm making....' which just about made Trevor Nelson's inane wittering bearable.  Big up to Sir Tim Berners-Lee for giving us the joy of the internet so we could all complain about Nelson in union.  As for Huw Edwards...

Anyhow, today's pick was Senegal who held Team GB to a one-all draw in the opening men's football match.  They're fielding 35 athletes across a variety of disciplines, having come a long way since Tokyo in 1964 where they were exclusively involved in athletics. (Thanks to the London 2012 website!)  Located on the coast of West Africa, and with a population of just under 13m, Senegal's cuisine is largely influenced by French, Portugese and North African cooking.

The recipe I selected today is a starter to a menu for dinner for eight.  I wanted something I could make for lunch and I just loved how delightfully Seventies the dish is.  Basically, it's a posher version of prawn cocktail with avocado, eggs, chickpeas, tomatoes and peppers thrown in.  The recipe says that it's a bit complicated.  The most complicated part was dragging all the ingredients from their various locations and then attempting to follow the faffy plating up.  I've admitted before that my presentation was lacking so in some ways it was refreshing having someone instructing me exactly what to do but even then I did my own thing - using three Little Gem leaves rather than a pile of shredded lettuce and adding an extra quarter of egg to keep the 'power of three' layout evenly balanced.

Flag of Senegal

It was so Seventies-tastic, right down to the instruction to garnish with parsley (I had flat leaf and curly to hand but this just screamed for curly!), that I duly Instagrammed it with the 1977 filter.  The first time I've ever used that one.

Taste wise, it was an interesting combination.  The avocado, lemon and yogurt worked well.  The chickpeas were a bit of a curve ball and not something I'd look to do again in a hurry but they bulked it out nicely to make a decent lunch.  I liked the vibrant reds and yellows as prawn cocktail, much as I love it, can often look a bit insipid.

Probably a bronze in the grand scheme of things.  You can find the recipe here.

Rachel Khoo's Terrine Forestiere

One of the questions I get asked most about this blog is how much has it cost me since day one.  Part of me wishes I'd kept track.  But like when we got married, I just engaged advanced ostrich mode and pretended that it didn't matter.

I'm very lucky to earn a decent salary that allows me to do this although with things rapidly heading south for us financially, it's a good thing that there are only two months left because otherwise I'd be writing about the different ways to serve beans on toast.  Okay, that's a little flippant because I know you can eat really well on a budget if you shop wisely.  And maybe that's what I should try to do over the course of my next blog.  But pretty much with the exception of cooking with expensive seafood (I really wanted to do lobster, scallops and oysters but continue to be put off by the cost), I've not really considered too much about what I've spent.

The most expensive things are fresh herbs which I never would've bought previously.  They really make a difference to so many dishes.  I know I could grow my own - I used to have two huge herb pots when I was a kid and loved the smell of the basil on a hot summer's day - but I've not had any success with growing them at our current house.  Other more expensive items have mostly been meat-related.

So today, I gave some consideration to the cost of this meal.  The recipe is basically a baked mushroom omelette using wild mushrooms.  It's the wrong time to forage and I'd probably end up making myself ill anyway.  I know that our local Morrisons has a good selection of fresh wild mushrooms but last time I bought 100g they cost me a fiver and this recipe called for 450g.  I'm not that stupid - not even for a special occasion.

Low fat and great value

In the end, I made half of the recipe and used 250g of chestnut mushrooms (£1) plus a handful of dried mushrooms (quarter of a £1.99 pack).  The eggs were about 20p each (2 of), half a 90p tub of creme fraiche, quarter of a 60p pack of parsley (15p), three spring onions because I didn't want to buy a huge bag of shallots I won't use (so about 25p-worth).  And some salt, pepper and garlic which don't really count in the budget but probably about 15p worth.  So around £2.75 for the recipe.  Which cuts into about eight small slices if you're using it for an appetiser and would serve four with salad.  I've already road-tested it for a snack and will have another serving for tea.  It will go in my lunchbox tomorrow and I'll probably snack on the rest at some point over the next two days.

At 70p per portion, that's not too bad.  But if you were making it with wild mushrooms, it's ridiculously expensive.

But it's very tasty.  The herbs absolutely make a difference.  And I like the way it was baked in a loaf tin, making it easy to slice and transport rather than faffing around with trying to fry and then grill a round frittata to get it to set.

The only thing I will recommend is using full fat creme fraiche as mine was a bit watery. I used low-fat to keep the calories down.   Or maybe I should've dried my mushrooms in kitchen paper after frying them off.  


And if you're on a carb-free diet, it's a really filling and tasty option.


You can find the recipe on page 130 of Little Paris Kitchen.

Wahaca: Mollettes

Never let it be said that I don't like themes and patterns.  This week has mostly been about Stuff-on-Toast.  And today is no exception.  I guess it's a reflection of my current mood because I'm a) looking for something a bit comforting - toast being the cure to everything in my world in preference to a nice cup of tea - and b) because I'm feeling a little fragile healthwise and so I'm not up for big food.

Slightly over-zealous salsa application

Stuff-on-Toast started on Wednesday when I picked up some English muffins from Waitrose on my way home from seeing the Quack.  I'd intended to have them as a snack with Miss A but then quickly got swayed by Rachel Khoo's Stuff-on-Toast recipe - or to give it it's proper name "Tartines Sucrées et Salées".  Yesterday's tea was scrambled eggs and Tommy-K on muffins, washed down with a mouthful of my disasterous Pimms jelly.  Breakfast this morning after an hour of BodyCombat was peanut butter and banana on a toasted muffin and lunch has been the most recent encounter with Stuff-on-Toast in the guise of Mollettes.

I was torn about trying this recipe as it seemed to be quite similar in theme to Miers' Queso Fundido which is basically refried beans smothered in cheese and grilled.  It's probably the one bug bear I have with some recipe books where they're by the same chef.  You often get the same - or minor variations on - other recipes from their previous books.  Miers' Tortilla Soup appears in both Wahaca: Mexican Food at Home and Mexican Cooking Made Easy as do variations on Queso Fundido, Caesar Salad and Mexican Hot Chocolate (just a few off the top of my head).  I own two books by Gordon Ramsay where around 50% of the recipes appear in both books.  The original Hummingbird Bakery and Cake Days have a couple of crossover recipes too.  I appreciate that maybe it's my fault for buying more than one book by the same person.  


Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised with this recipe.  It is a doddle and I was really tempted to make it with all storecupboard ingredients but did half and half, using Discovery refried beans in place of Miers' own recipe (which I really must get around to trying) but making the fresh tomato salsa myself - rather than using some shop-bought that I had in the fridge for using in sandwiches.


If one thing has changed in my cooking this past year it's that I'm more likely to have fresh herbs and tomatoes to hand.  This time last year, I probably hadn't bought a fresh tomato for about five years.  But today, I was able to root some from the back of the crisper, safe in the knowledge that the Ocado man will bring some more this evening.  As for the herbs, my staple is now to have a growing pot of coriander in the garden.  I really wanted to plant my own but I've never successfully grown herbs since we've had a male dog.  When he was a puppy, he took a fancy to chewing them.  I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions to what he does to them now.  I've tried growing them in a wall trough but they just died so now just pop a store-bought pot on my patio table instead.


Making the fresh salsa was a revelation.  Miers uses a combination of tomatoes, chilli, red onion, lime juice, sugar and salt.  I initially thought that the sugar would make it too sweet but it works brilliantly with the slightly salty cheese and beans and the taste combination of all the Stuff-on-Toast(ed muffin) together was amazing.  And despite the cheese and beans, the zingy salsa makes this perfect for a little summer snackage.


It actually comes from the breakfast section of the book.  Much as I love my post-workout peanut butter and banana munch when I've got the time to make it, I am so thinking of swapping it for this once in a while.  New favourite recipe.  Wahaca: Mexican Food at Home - highly recommended

Wahaca: Green Rice Salad

One of my overriding childhood food memories is the annual family barbecue to celebrate my mum's birthday on August 3rd.  You could guarantee a pound to a penny that it would rain and my mum would end up barbecuing in the rain while the rest of us sat inside and watched her.

An Ingram family barbecue always consists of the same things.  To this day.  Sausages and burgers must come from the local butcher.  The only other thing we're ever allowed is chicken.  The salad contains cucumber, lettuce, tomatoes, spring onions and eggs.  Nothing else.  And most definitely no dressing.  Mayonnaise not salad cream.  My grandmother's homemade coleslaw and my mother's rice salad.  And that's it.  Them's the rules.

It's like Christmas day.  We have rules.  God forbid you consider breaking them and trying something new.  And my family always say I'm the unadventurous, fussy one!  In fact, when I hosted Christmas at my house last year, I was so terrified of doing something different from the norm that I very nearly didn't post anything that day.  In a moment of rebellion, I then plumped for Brussel Sprouts with Pancetta but also made regular sprouts for everyone else lest I got in trouble.  I was the only one who ate the 'weird' sprouts.  And very nice they were too.

There are a few green bits in there.  Somewhere.

Mum's birthday barbecue is fast approaching and I'm desperate to get my family to try the Wahaca Three Tomato Salad, an amazing looking Courgette and Goats Cheese Bread by the lovely Fiona Harvey who I met on my recent soujourn to Scotland.  And I want them to try today's rice salad recipe. But I know I'll wimp out and just end up making the birthday cake which I've always been allowed free reign with since I was about eight.

My mum's rice salad contains damp long grain rice, frozen prawns which always seem to have retained a bit too much water, peas, carrots and diced red pepper.  Colourful maybe, but despite the addition of a little vinaigrette, it's so bland.

Whereas the Wahaca salad is brightly coloured and packed with a different taste sensation in every mouthful.  Salty feta, sweet courgettes and corn, spicy chilli and the subtle seasoning of coriander and mint.  I had this for my lunch today and it was really quick to prepare and very filling.  It would go perfectly with barbecued meat but I'm not sure I'm man enough to make it for the big day.

Miers mentions that the original recipe contained leftovers from her green rice recipe but that she now just makes it with plain basmati rice for speed.  I definitely want to make the green version at a later date but the idea of putting green rice in front of my family is definitely a step too far.

If you want to try this recipe yourself, you can find it in Wahaca: Mexican Food at Home.

Wahaca: Three Tomato Salad

I have hated fresh tomatoes with a passion for my entire life.  They loiter on the side of your plate in pubs, oozing their juice over the best chips or lurk surreptitiously in the middle of shop-bought sandwiches, making the bread soggy.  This makes me grumpy.  If I'm dining in company, whoever my companion is (historically my grandfather or mother, now the husband) will immediately be furnished with said tomatoes in exchange for cucumber and/or coleslaw.  They offend me so much I can't even have them on my plate.  It's the slimy insides I don't like.  And cherry tomatoes are the work of the devil as they have the greatest slime-to-flesh ratio of all tomatoes.

I've got nothing against cooked tomatoes.  Not cooked whole tomatoes, you understand.  But if they're in a sauce then I'm okay with that.  And, one of my favourite recipes from this blog so far has been Thomasina Miers' chilli jam - which contains mountains of tomatoes.  I keep a huge jar in the fridge to dollop into sandwiches or eat alongside salads.

Not quite as nicely styled as the book version but just as tasty

The only time in my thirty-something years on this planet that I've ever enjoyed tomatoes was the first time I met the parents of my very first boyfriend.  Despite him being off to the top end of the weird scale, I really liked his parents and when they offered to make us dinner, I politely accepted.  His dad was a keen gardener and grew all his own fruit and veg.  You can imagine my horror when the aforementioned meal turned out to be chicken with a fresh tomato salad.  But because I was bought up to have good manners (things have changed since then!) I accepted the plate with good grace and steeled myself to do battle with the mound of tomatoes, taunting me.

What a surprise.  These were firm and tasty and had that gorgoeous fresh-grown tomato smell.  I've always loved that smell and it reminds me of when my mum used to grow tomatoes when I was a child.  Dressed in a simple vinaigrette and sprinkled liberally with salt, they were an absolute revelation.  Nothing like those squidgy, slimy, dreary salad tomatoes peddled by the supermarkets.

Sadly for my tomato-eating career, we split up soon afterwards on the advice of his mother.  She had the sense to see I could do better for myself (I couldn't have done worse!).  Don't get me wrong - she liked me. She even told me I was dating the wrong son and that I'd be a fantastic daughter-in-law (I was a late starter on the dating scene).  But the weird, psychotic tendencies of son number two quickly sent me running for the hills.

The past fifteen years have been plagued by further encounters with both people firmly at the wrong end of the weirdo scale and nasty tomatoes too.  I'm sure I've eaten in places that could've changed my tomato fearing mind, but it's just something I would never consider ordering.  When you go out, you go out to eat for pleasure, not to torture yourself.  Lycopersicoaphobia has remained firmly rooted in my psyche.

Until I got my copy of Wahaca: Mexican Food at Home by Thomasina Miers.  If you're a regular reader, you'll know I adore Thomasina's books.  And I'm now eager to holiday in Mexico one day (although I'll be going by myself as Mr Fussy wouldn't eat the food and would worry that he'd get kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel).  Flicking through the book, the one recipe that really captured my imagination was the aforementioned Three Tomato Salad.  Yes.  Seriously.  I've been obsessing about this for a couple of weeks now to the point where I'm wondering exactly why I'm craving something I can't stand.

For the record, I would like to categorically state that I am not pregnant.  My mother will obviously be very disappointed by that.  My boss will most likely be relieved.  As will the husband because he's starting to make noises about me working late too often.  I am actually working to keep a roof over our heads!

Pretty colours

So today, I headed to Morrisons to pick up some real tomatoes.  They've recently revamped the fruit and veg section and you can buy all manner of weird and wonderful things.  And lots of it doesn't come stuffed into a huge plastic box so you can just buy what you need.  Okay, it's probably more expensive, but I don't mind paying a bit more to buy only what I need if it's far tastier than a giant economy pack of flavourless tomatoes.

I was spoilt for choice with stripy Heirloom tomatoes and tiny orange plum tomatoes, regular cherry tomatoes on the vine and pretty orange and yellow tomatoes.  I really wanted someone to share this joyous occasion with but the husband is crashed out on the bed after another session of the Insanity workout and I'm too impatient to save it until the next time I'm at my mothers so it seemed the perfect antidote to yet another wet and dreary day.

The flavours are amazing.  Fresh tomatoes with feta and pineapple, mixed with a red-wine vinegar dressing.  The salt of the feta cuts beautifully through the sweet tomatoes and is balanced well with the acid from the pineapple and the dressing.  In fact this now ranks up there with my all time favourite recipes from this year.  And I have enough tomatoes left to make it again for tomorrow's lunch.  I was planning on using them to make Gazpacho, but it seems a criminal waste of beautiful tomatoes.

I'm now firmly converted!

Leith's Thai Noodle Salad

So today was a bit of a big day.  First day back at work.   4am alarm call. New healthy eating regime (again).  Restarting the exercise thing (again!).  New boss (thankfully he's quite nice if you feed him cake - just not after midnight).  400-odd emails in my inbox after a two-week holiday (that excludes the fifty-odd I read and replied to whilst I was away, and I'm not even important!)  A mountain of washing that still needs to be conquered.

I had intended to make a low-fat turkey chilli for lunch, but then I realised I hadn't organised myself well enough for lunch at work (this was at 3.57am, just before the alarm call) so I decided to whack together a little prawn noodle salad, thus saving me from temptation at the salad bar in the canteen at lunchtime.

Healthy luncheon

Ordinarily, when I'm at my base site, I'll have a jacket potato and salad.  Trouble is, salad is about the only thing they do well and I usually end up with pasta or rice salad and coleslaw and all manner of other lovely salads, covered in dressings crammed on to my plate, meaning that I'd probably have done better to have something else.  But making my own instead, even if it meant cooking noodles before 5am, meant that I managed to stay relatively safe during day one.


Despite eating lots of rubbish on holiday, lugging around a 15kg toddler meant that I came home 4lbs lighter than when I went.  We walked several miles most days and this is a long way when you're only two.  When you're thirty-five and carrying a two-year-old it seems even further.  I now not only need to see a chiropractor about my hip pains (which keep interrupting my running) but also my bad back and neck from too many piggy backs.  I'm keen to keep up the weight loss momentum so healthy eating and low-impact exercise will be replacing cake and toddler carrying for the next few months.


The recipe today came from my Leiths Simple Cooking book.  I adapted it based on what I had in my fridge and it worked quite well for a lunch box meal.  The flavours were delicate, it was filling enough for me to miss out on my afternoon snack that the diet allows and it made me feel thoroughly virtuous.  Definitely a diet make-again as it's less than 300 cals.


Serves 1 (adapted from Leith's Simple Cookery)

• 1 nest medium egg noodles (I used Blue Dragon, 158 cals for the nest)
• 100g cooked and peeled King Prawns
• 3 radishes, finely sliced
• 3" chunk cucumber, cubed
• 2 spring onions, cut diagonally
• 1/2 red chilli, finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp nam pla (fish sauce)
• a couple of sprigs of coriander, chopped
• a few mint leaves, chopped
• pinch of soft brown sugar
• splash soy sauce
• 1 lime

1. Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions.  Once cooked, drain then run under the cold tap.
2. Cut the lime in two.  Squeeze the juice of one half of the lime into a small bowl and stir in the nam pla, soy sauce, sugar, chilli, coriander and mint.
3. Mix the vegetables, prawns and noodles together then pour over the dressing.
4. Squeeze the juice from the other half of the lime over the dish just before serving.

Welsh Rarebit (or Rabbit)

I'm feeling mighty guilty for picking a Welsh recipe whilst holidaying in Scotland.  I did do a Scottish recipe on Burns night - and missed St David's Day.  And I'm hoping that during this holiday (this post may auto-publish if I've got no interweb) that I'll have swapped out one of my planned recipes for some lovely, locally sourced Scottish produce.  But with two weeks of quick, speedy recipes to come up with, I'm now getting desperate.

Cheese on toast.  Whod've thought it could be so complicated?  But even in our house, I cook it two different ways.  The husband only likes his bread toasted on one side.  The soft side must then be buttered before being covered in sliced cheese.  The cheese must melt and not have a single speck of brown on it.  He then eats it with a knife and fork.

I, on the other hand, really prefer my cheese unmelted.  Give me two nice pieces of toast that have been left in the toaster until they've cooled a little and gone crispy.  Butter with butter that's out of the fridge, but not too hard or too soft (Lurpak spreadable makes this so much easier - but the toast has to be totally cold or it makes the bread soggy with its higher water content).  I then like my cheese grated on the fine grater setting (never the thick one) and piled on top.

Or, if I'm making proper cheese on toast, then I like a smattering of brown specks, but not so much that it tastes of toasted cheese.  We're a fussy pair, aren't we?

I wondered how I could challenge our foibles.  Sometimes the simple things are the best and can't be improved on.  But I'm all about change this year.  So Welsh Rarebit (Rabbit) it was.

A quick Google turned up so many recipes that I started out with Felicity Cloake's article on how to make the best Welsh Rarebit (Rabbit).  It seems like anything goes with different cheeses, liquids, breads and seasonings.  I just wanted something simple.  The husband was pleased to let me try it as it meant I bought him some beer for the evening - I only needed two tablespoons.

I plumped for egg yolks, a dash of Worcestershire sauce and some Dijon mustard - it was all I had.  And it wasn't half bad.  The husband had a bit and said it was 'too cheesy'.  I think he meant it was too tangy for him.  We always have Double Gloucester as the husband doesn't like really mature cheddar.  The combination of flavours ended up making it tangy like a stronger cheddar but with a beautifully soft, melty texture thanks to the liquid and the eggs.

This is something to experiment with when I get home.  After I've had a bit of a holiday food detox.

You can read Felicity's article here.

BBC Good Food Fully Loaded Cajun Burgers

This recipe is a variation on something I used to regularly make the husband for dinner.  One of those calorie-laden meals that have thankfully been banished to the 'once in a blue moon' list of emergency meals that I can make with little effort.

It kind of seems appropriate to do this one while we're away on holiday because hopefully we'll have been out somewhere nice today and I will need a quick meal to feed the troops.

This post has been pre-written so I can't comment on the taste yet, but hopefully if we have a decent 3G signal where we're staying, I can update the post before the auto-schedule kicks in and give you my considered opinion with a picture as evidence of what I did.

That said, what's not to like about a ciabatta roll filled with chicken, bacon, avocado and cheese?  Anyone?  Well except for the veggies of course...

I expect the only way it could be improved would be with a homemade ciabatta roll and a pile of curly fries on the side.

*Note to self* - time to buy some elasticated waist jeans!

If you, too, want to become a weeble, you can find the recipe here.

Updated 20th July 2012 @ 15:28:

Of course, this one went down really well with the husband.  He had his without avocado, I had mine with the works.  Miss A ate peanut butter on toast.  Mission to get everyone to eat the same thing?  Failed.  Mission to turn us all into weebles?  Accomplished.

Stuffed Peppers

At the moment, I'm reading Nigel Slater's 'Toast'.  Although he was born in 1958 and is a contemporary of my mother and my uncle; many of his food references could have been picked straight from my own childhood.  Brands like Cadburys Smash and Mini Rolls; Birds Custard; Dairylea on Cornish Wafers; and tins of Teatime Selection Biscuits.


Like Slater, as a child, I used to pore over my mother's recipe books and dream of eating many of the things on those glossy colour plates.  Never the things that were drawn or photographed in black-and-white; just the things in glorious technicolour.  Sadly, secondary school cookery (and my mother's assertion that catering was a bad career choice) put paid to any foodie aspirations.

Need to practise with the Instagram aperture setting!

One of my favourite books as a youngster though was a copy of Cookery for Children.  Despite most of the pictures being coloured drawings, there was something exciting about the idiot-proof step-by-step guide to making chocolate orange cheesecake or egg-in-the-window.  I also had copies of Gardening for Children and Modelling (as in craft!) for Children.  All three of which were much thumbed.  But I never once made anything from any of them.

I'm sure the books are probably still stashed away somewhere at my grandparents house, waiting faithfully for me to discover them on that sad day when we'll have to clear the house out.  They are most definitely on the list of things that will be being saved.

My mother recently bought Abigail a cookery book and I was amazed to see that despite technology having progressed so much and it being far easier to do step-by-step photographs, the pictures are still reassuringly hand drawn.  You could almost believe the artist is the same as the style is so similar.  It's only the modern recipes that give away the fact that it's not the same book.

Leafing through it at the weekend, I came across a recipe for stuffed peppers.  As a child, my mother used to have a habit of stuffing anything that found its way into the kitchen and didn't move after five minutes.  Of course, chicken and turkeys expect to be stuffed, but she also stuffed rolled pork joints, capsicums, aubergines, marrows and all manner of offal things.  The thought of stuffed hearts still turns my stomach to this day.

Her stuffed peppers were filled with mince and rice.  I have no idea why I refused to eat them (I guess I was a child and it was my prerogative).  Instead, I got mince, beans and rice - basically chilli without the chilli and using baked beans instead of kidney beans.  She also used to stuff her peppers by slicing the top off, filling the middle and then serving them with the lids back on top, mince peeking provocatively from the top.  Even that didn't sell it to me.

Much as I'd love Abigail to eat stuffed peppers, I think that day is a long way off in the future.  In the meantime, the sentimental side of me couldn't let another children's cookery book go unloved so I decided to make the peppers for my own lunch today.

It's not exactly the weather for such fresh, healthsome food.  These demand to be eaten outside in the sunshine with a crisp green salad, a glass of wine (not for the children of course!) and some crusty bread.  It's a good storecupboard recipe for using up random things from the fridge - I have five more capsicums to do something with before we go on holiday next week.

I also added a handful of pine nuts to the recipe for a bit of crunch, but this is one of those very forgiving recipes that you can tweak to your hearts content.  I also used arborio rice and think next time, I'd cook the rice in stock (as per adapted recipe below).

Can see this working well with chilli con carne (my review of Lorraine Pascale's is the second most popular post on this blog) and loaded with sour cream.  Served of course, like my mother made hers with the top serving as a lid, goodies just about ready to spill over the side.

Forgot to write down the details of the book, but will update the post with the correct references later.

Serves 4

Memories of my childhood

• 4 bell peppers, halved and de-seeded
• 125g arborio rice
• 125g cheddar, grated
• 25g parmesan, grated
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 2 tomatoes, de-seeded and diced
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
• small handful each of parsley and basil, chopped
• 25g pine nuts, toasted
• half a chicken or vegetable stock cube
• salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/350F.
2. Add the stock cube to a pan of water, bring to the boil then cook the risotto rice for 12 minutes. Drain under cold running water to stop it cooking further.
3. While the rice is cooking, heat the oil in a small frying pan over a medium heat and saute the onion for 3-4 minutes until translucent.  Add the garlic and cook for a further 1-2 minutes, taking care to not let the garlic burn.  Remove from the heat.
4. Place the peppers onto a baking tray.  Mix the onions, garlic, rice, tomatoes, cheeses, pine nuts and herbs together.  Season to taste.
5. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the pepper shells are soft.

Diana Henry's Diamond Jubilee Chicken

I finally got round to making this, albeit a day or two late.  Mostly because the only person who I know who would've enjoyed this dish would've been the Queen of my life - my beloved Grandma.  Our Jubilee celebrations were somewhat muted by her absence.  It's been nearly seven years since she passed away and her presence is still keenly missed at significant events.  Especially when they involve the Queen, because when I was little, I genuinely thought she was the Queen.

She used to have the same kind of perm that was hairsprayed to within an inch of its life.  She was short like the Queen, never showed her emotions when she was sad and was the perfect matriarch to keep us all in line; yet would always put herself before everyone else when there was a crisis.

It tastes better than it looks in the picture!

So much so that I honestly believe that she wanted to be so much more; but she was born in a time where women knew their place and did as they were told by their fathers and then their husbands.  That's not to say that my grandad bossed her around - far from it. But just simple things - like what we had for dinner - were dictated by the male of the household.

Whenever I moan about cooking two or three different dinners, I always try and remember that we were bought up eating what made my grandad happy and she'd only get her way over dinner if we went out to a restaurant.  He's a little more adventurous these days, but it took years to twist his arm.

I remember Coronation Chicken being introduced to the household at some big family event or another.  Curry wasn't even permitted so the idea of cold chicken curry was completely radical.  I'll readily admit that I ate a bit and turned my own nose up at it.  I'm not sure if my memory fails me but I swear it had something like grapes or raisins in it.  And that's what put me off.

But as I matured and my tastes changed, I started to enjoy the amazing Coronation Chicken sandwiches I used to get from a tiny artisan deli near Exmouth Market when I was living and working in London.  And I'm sure I enjoyed it at least once when my grandma made it before she passed away.  But of course it's one of those things that I've parked on a 'not without Grandma' shelf since then.  Along with the chocolates that I bought her back from holiday the day before she left us.  They lived in the back of my fridge - moving house twice - until recently when I finally threw them out.

Anyhow, it felt appropriate to try a modernisation of Coronation Chicken to celebrate the Jubilee.  I was torn between this recipe and BBC Good Food's reworking of it.  The Torygraph recipe won out simply because it was more faithful to the original recipe - using fresh mango whereas the Beeb used pomegranates.

Queen of my heart (second left)

Overall, it worked really well together.  The old-fashioned dressing complimented the fresh, modern flavour of mango and avocado and I loved the touch of the crunchy nuts.  My only gripe was that the dressing was a bit tasteless but I'm assuming that it depends completely on the ingredients that you use.  It includes mayonnaise, curry powder and mango chutney.  All of which will vary greatly depending on the brands that you choose to use.  I would normally use Geeta's Premium Mango Chutney, but had run out so bought some of Tesco's Finest Mango and Apricot Chutney.  It was particularly sour and vinegary - not something I'll be using as an accompaniment to a curry.  And the mayo wasn't my usual brand either.  So it took a little tinkering until I was happy with it.  But of course, my quantities will only work for someone else with similar brands and a similar palate.

If you're not all Jubilee'd out and looking for something different to serve for a special occasion, this would be a good sharing dish.  But beware of the industrial quantity of dressing it makes!  You might be eating it for days on end so make sure you like the flavour.

You can find the recipe here.

Nigel Slater's Mushroom Bruschetta

This recipe is from an article on the Observer website entitled 'Seven Speedy Snacks'.  I was looking for a really quick breakfast idea that involved mushrooms and leftover sourdough and I just knew that Nigel Slater was the man who'd offer me a recipe.  He just loves putting things on toast.  I assume this is why his autobiography (which I've still got to read - note to self, download to Kindle) is entitled 'Toast'.

Breakfast!

It's one of those really simple recipes that you could probably come up with yourself and I'm sure lots of people will say 'I already make that'.  But sometimes you need inspiration.  Especially with a mammoth task of single-handedly organising a toddler for a weekend away and updating a blog on a Jubilee cake.

I'm also not popular with the hubby because I set the smoke detector off toasting the sourdough this morning.  It goes from stale to burnt remarkably quickly.  But it's a great way to use up the last slice of four-day-old sourdough bread.

And that's it for today.  Just a short blog.  Happy Jubilee weekend!

Lil Ms Squirrel's Panzanella

I was on a course today and during the breaks (because my mind NEVER wanders when I'm at work), I got to thinking about identity and more specifically how I identify myself.  Like most courses, you had to do the 'Name, Job Title, How Long You've Been With the Company, Tell Us Something Unusual' icebreaker-y thing at the start.  Knowing pretty much everyone in the room, I may have tuned out just a little and focussed my attention on the course notes.

When on another course recently, we were asked to do the same exercise and I decided to shake things up a bit by introducing myself with my Twitter profile.  It sums me up quite well in 140 characters and tells people more about me than they would probably ever care to know.  Saying so much in such as small amount of letters is pretty amazing for someone like me who has a tendency for verbosity.

If you've never seen my Twitter profile (why not??!), I sum my self up like this:


"Slummy mummy, blogger, jogger, maker, baker, doer, high heeled shoer, daydream believer, Mrs @lccphotography, and international woman of mystery"

Just to clear up 'The International Woman of Mystery' bit, I work for one of those institutions that if you knew who it was, I'd probably have to kill you.  In fact, I'm now worried every time I vaguely mention my work on my blog that I'm violating our recently published social media policy.  Mostly because with a bit of smart Googling, you can find out what I do and where.  I'm not at all important.  But I like to keep people guessing.



Salady goodness



I have various personas depending on the situation but at work, if people don't know me personally, they know me as 'the lady with the shoes'.  The men always joke about who will steal my shoes (especially the red patent heels) if I have to leave them in one of the 'safe' areas before donning my oh-so-sexy safety shoes.

All of the older ladies on site are very taken with my collection of towering heels and enviously tell me that they wish they were young enough to still get away with wearing shoes like that.  And take great delight in telling me that I'll be in for a bout of varicose veins in a few years time and will find comfort in a frumpy pair of Dr Scholls like my mother used to wear when she was my age.  I'll stick to running shoes, thanks all the same.

Today, I was sporting a new pair of turquoise suede platform shoes - with a five inch heel.  Hardly practical for any job but worse when you are on a site tour with someone from H&S who has issues with high heeled shoes.  To be fair, said person was quite right and having been on my feet most of the day (normally I sit at my desk bare foot) by the time I got home, I was tired and had sore feet and really couldn't be bothered with dinner tonight.

The temptation was to just toast the remains of yesterday's sourdough and slather it with butter and jam (not all on the same area - I don't like the two things spread on top of each other - but of course, I had to try something new for the blog.

With a lack of vegetable matter in the fridge, I hit on the idea of a panzanella.  I've seen this made on the tellybox several times before and have always shied away from it because it involves stale, soggy bread.  I don't do soggy bread - I like mine crispy.  But the one thing I was pretty sure about was that this is one of those salads with a myriad of interpretations.  And I wasn't wrong.

In fact, Wikipedia (which of course is totally true) states that the modern version of panzanella is a salad of stale bread, soaked in water and dried and tomatoes, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.  It then carries on to list a whole raft of other things that you may include in a panzanella.  Stopping just short of throwing the kitchen sink in.  In fact, if you didn't know better and if you pick and choose correctly, you could actually end up with a Salad Nicoise instead. 

So, I set about making up my own panzanella.  I kept made sure I had tomatoes - which I'm actually beginning to like after all these years since I've forced myself to eat them whilst writing this blog.  And I did the bread thing, but instead of soaking it to bring it back to freshness, I actually baked mine to make croutons.  I'm sure a real Florentine traditionalist would have a dose of the vapours over that choice.  I then added some sald vegetables, fresh herbs and a chopped up pan-fried chicken breast.  With a lemon dressing (I left out the recommended garlic - mostly because I have a lot of meetings tomorrow), I had myself a really nice storecupboard salad (okay I keep my salad in the crisper in the fridge, but you know what I mean!).

And because the salad was vaguely virtuous and I've not eaten since breakfast, I think I fully deserve the last of my fully loaded brownies.

So this is how I made my salad for one.  Easily multiplied but not in this house as it contains vegetables.  And I'm the only one who eats them.

Recipe

• 1 ripe tomato, cut into eight chunks
• 3 inch piece of cucumber, cut into chunks
• 1 slice day old bread - sourdough or other rustic bread is best
• 2 tsp chilli olive oil
• 2 tsp plain olive oil
• 1/2 small red onion, finely sliced
• 1 chicken breast
• 2 tsp Schwarz chargrilled chicken seasoning
• small handful of fresh mixed herbs, chopped - I used basil and coriander
• half a little gem lettuce (optional)

For the dressing

• 2 tsp olive oil
• 2 tsp white wine vinegar
• juice of half a lemon
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cut the bread into 1/2 inch cubes and toss with the chilli olive oil.

Bake in an oven preheated to 220c/200c fan for 10-15 minutes until brown and crispy

Butterfly the chicken breast and sprinkle both sides with the seasoning.

Heat the 2tsp plain olive oil in a small frying pan and pan fry the chicken for about 10 minutes, turning once, or until fully cooked.  Remove from the pan and leave to rest for five minutes, then chop into chunks.

Meanwhile mix the cucumber, tomatoes and onion and herbs in a bowl.

Mix the dressing ingredients and season to taste.

Combine the chicken, croutons, vegetables and dressing.  Mix well then serve on the lettuce (if using).

BBC Good Food Potato Salad with Caesar Dressing

Whilst the warm weather has made me productive in some areas (getting the washing done and dried), it's made me lazy in other areas (slaving over a hot iron/computer to write my blog/hot stove etc etc).  Tea last night was an indoor/outdoor barbecue (last Friday's post will fill you in on this).  We ate the leftover food from Friday's barbecue along with salad and new potatoes.

I always over-estimate the number of new potatoes I need (or rather that the husband will eat - approximately two) so was left with a huge pile in the fridge.  Having been to lazy to make myself sandwiches last night, I had an epiphany at about 4am this morning as to what to take to work for my lunch - potato salad.

Not just any potato salad, but a Caesar dressed potato salad - the idea coming from a recipe I happened across on Friday when looking at recipes for Caesar dressing.  Bingo.  I still had some dressing left from Friday so stirred one bowl into the other and hey-presto, I had lunch.

A little heavy on the prosciutto!

To give it some body I also threw in a chopped up frankfurter (we always have them in the fridge because it's about the only lunch the husband can make for himself).  It was a really nice lunch - mostly because my beloved grandma used to make me a similar potato salad with frankfurters for my lunch when I was a kid (and probably why I was so fat back then).

Because my dressing had been 'developing' in the fridge for a couple of days, I will admit that iit tasted fishier than I remembered from Friday and if I'm honest and was making it again, I'd probably leave them out because I'm really not a fan and I'm sure the dressing tastes fine without them - it's just obviously not a true Caesar dressing.

You can find the original potato salad recipe here.  It's much easier than the one I made Friday because it uses shop-bought mayonnaise rather than making your own.  The dressing I used came from Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Easy, one of my favourite books.

And because I'm so lazy and there was so much left over, I ate the remainders for my tea - without the frankfurter but with baked prosciutto crumbled over the top.

Thomasina Miers "The Original Caesar Salad"

My two favourite things about summer are picnics and barbecues.  Reading Good Food Magazine this time of year makes me insanely jealous because of the picture perfect family gatherings they show accompanied by pages of recipes for tasty outdoor eating.  The closest we generally get as a family to outdoor eating is a cheese and ham toastie in a pub garden - mostly because the husband wants a beer.

It's not for want of trying.  Whenever I invite my family to visit in the summer, it always rains and we end up eating indoors.  We do occasionally go on picnics to Corsham Lake but my new fear that Miss A is going to end up drowning herself looking for the sheep that was stuck in the lake on our last visit, coupled with the husband's discerning food palate (I once made cheese and onion bread for the picnic - this didn't go down well and all he ate was Hula Hoops and bananas) means that it's not really the relaxing, joyous occasion that I always hope for.

Then there's the barbecue.  Source of endless despair.  The current incumbent was purchased two years ago.  It's not been used.  Not for want of trying, but the husband has this paranoid fear about setting fire to things.  I think I only got away with having lit candle votives scattered around the tables at our wedding reception was because he was so nervous beforehand - and then so inebriated from the apple vodka a Polish friend bought - that he didn't notice  So whenever I suggest a barbecue, rather than beating his chest like a caveman (how I assume most men react to the thought of cooking large slabs of meat over open fire) he finds a way to convince me to cook indoors and eat outdoors.  I feel like Hyacinth Bucket (a reference for UK readers) with her "Indoors Outdoors Barbecue with Finger Boo-fay"

Summer lunching

But because our bottom-of-the-garden neighbour angered the husband earlier this week for randomly burning stuff in his chimenea at 11 o'clock in the morning and making two loads of washing stink of smoke, the husband is determined we will have a barbecue tonight to exact revenge and smoke out said neighbour.

There is a small flaw in this plan.  It has nothing to do with wind direction or the fact we barbecue on our patio which is a good twenty-feet from the neighbour's house.  It's the fact that the minute it stops raining and it's warmer than 10C, the bottom-of-the-garden neighbour barbecues every single meal.  Well maybe not his cocoa pops, but in weather like this, they often seem to have all day barbecues every day.  So any effect from our paltry barbecue will be lost in the fug that regularly emanates over the bottom fence.  But still, if it means we actually get to eat real, barbecued food then who am I to complain?

In anticipation, I went a bit mad with the Ocado 3 for £10 offers this week and have enough barbecue food to reciprocally barbecue every meal for the next week.  I never thought for a moment that this was an ideal opportunity to try something new on the barbecue.  And so this is why, after thumbing through Mexican Food Made Easy and rueing a missed opportunity, I settled on trying a Caesar salad.  Mostly because I still have some anchovies left over from another experiment and have no idea what to do with the strange little salty fish.

I never would've guessed that the salad had its origins in Mexico but apparently it was invented by an Italian chef in a restaurant in Tijuana.  I knew the story about it being thrown together in desperation when they ran out of food, just not that it was in Mexico - hence it's inclusion in the book.

In essence, it's just lettuce with some croutons (made using a square of the gorgeous foccacia that I made and partly froze) tossed with the ubiquitous dressing and then covered with shavings of parmesan.  But of course, it's that ubiquitous dressing that caused the problem.

Because I wanted to halve the ingredients and didn't want the faff of messing up my food processor, I toyed with the idea of making the dressing manually so researched other recipes and they pretty much all use regular mayonnaise, thinned down with a variety of liquids including white wine vinegar, lemon juice and yogurt.  I toyed with the idea but then figured that it would be someone else's recipe and not Thomasina's.  So sticking with the original quantities, I got under way.  Except the rubbish food processor attachment for my Kenwood Prospero didn't even touch the ingredients with its blades.  I ended up scooping it all back out and putting it into the blender attachment instead.  This time it worked better but I ended up with double the faffy washing up!  And the anchovies were still a bit lumpy - but you can't have everything.

Worth it for a really tasty, if unhealthy salad.  And it now means that I know what I'm having for lunch or dinner over the next few days.  Bang goes the diet :-/

Grilled nectarine salad with roasted chicken, feta, rocket and peanuts

This evening I had what was very nearly a perfect meal for a perfect, summer's evening.  In fact, the meal was perfect.  There were just a few things that spoiled it.

Number 1.  My dogs.  They are intent on trying to burrow their way under the fence to Percy's house.  Percy is a scruffy little white dog who lives in our bottom-of-the-garden neighbour's house.  The need to burrow is accompanied by a lot of noise.  To the outsider, they sound fierce.  With insider knowledge of my two dogs, they just want to play.  Despite being five and four they both behave like mad puppies - even in this heat.  It's really quite exhausting - if I was a dog, I'd just want to laze on the patio.  Still - it saves me from having to dig up lots of weeds.

Number 2.  The absence of a perfect man to share the evening with.  Or in lieu of him, I ate alone as the husband is off shooting vintage pinup pictures in an oilseed rape field - yellow flowers, red-haired model, blue sky.  All very arty.  If I'm honest though, I didn't mind so much that he wasn't around because there was no face pulling that I had fruit, cheese, nuts and chicken all on the one plate.  Nor complaining that I had to take a picture of my dinner first.  Or that it was too hot to eat a cooked meal (he would've had chicken and Uncle Ben's rice with gravy because it's Wednesday).  So I sat and daydreamed about having perfect company in the absence of any.  Tall, dark, handsome, rich, well mannered, eats what's put in front of him and knows how to treat a lady.   A girl can dream.

My new favourite meal, ever!

Number 3.  A chilled glass of Chablis or Prosecco.  I generally don't drink (for no reason other than I'm a lightweight) and very rarely think of having alcohol with a meal.  And I'm certainly too old to drink on a school night.  But this dish and the beautiful evening was just crying out for a little drinky to celebrate the end of a lovely day.  Well it would've been lovely if I'd not been stuck at work all day.  But you know what I mean.

So why this dish?  Well thumbing through my Leith's Simple Cookery the other day, I happened across a recipe for nectarine, feta and rocket salad.  On the way home this afternoon, I had a sudden urge to sink my teeth into a beautifully ripe, yellow-fleshed nectarine.  And with all the other ingredients at home, I figured that would be a good recipe for tonight (I failed on the planning front this week so am just picking things randomly each day).

Then, when I looked online to see if I could find a link for the recipe to put on the blog, I happened across this recipe  by The Food Fox instead.  I was utterly sold by reading the post about the lucky, lucky person who can just drive to their local farm store and buy whole boxes of fresh-off-the-tree nectarines.  I was so jealous.  I don't even want to consider how many food miles my paltry tray of four nectarines travelled.

Nectarines are right up there at the top of my favourite fruit list.  During summer I will pretty much eat nothing else on the fruit front apart from nectarines and raspberries.  Until that very sad day when you bite into a nectarine and the flesh is all furry and you realise the season is over for another year.  I love peaches too.  I'm just not a fan of the fuzzy skin.  The only downer on the nectarine front was that I could only get white-flesh ones.  The taste is great, but the salad would've looked so much better with the juice-oozy yellow-flesh fruit in amongst the pale feta and chicken.

As the blog says, the dish is an assault on the taste buds and senses.  Salty, sweet, sour, crunchy and creamy.  Every mouthful is a different experience with the punchy mustard or the salty-smooth feta, teamed with peppery rocket and crunchy peanuts.  I would eat this every night for dinner throughout the summer and would never get bored.

It's so filling too.  Sometimes I feel a bit cheated with salads simply by their virtuousness and feel that they need some degree of carbs on the side - fresh bread, minted new potatoes in their skins, a little cooled, dressed pasta.  But with this one, I honestly felt absolutely stuffed afterwards, like I'd eaten a big, fat meal and it still came in at less than 500 calories - even with peanuts thrown in.

Now off to enjoy the last of the daylight once I've added it to my make again list.  Shame I can't have it for tea tomorrow!