Sunday Roast

I went through a big phase, between the ages of about 15 and probably 29, where I really thought that I didn't like roast dinners...
I think this possibly stemmed from some kind of gravy experience in childhood that was so traumatic that my subconscious is protecting me from.
However, I've recently discovered that, in fact, I perhaps only really dislike BAD roast dinners and that tasty ones (sans gravy, obviously) can actually be pretty, well, tasty :-)

So - Sunday dinner...
Chicken


Warm multiple bean salad with chillis and sorrel


With roasted vegetables and jersey royals


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Saturday

Nice easy tea today... Flakey haddock with broad bean a d rocket salad.




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More Meat

It's been a seriously meaty few days!
Onglet with chargrilled onions and peppers and rocket salad.



Accompanied by Mother's Ruin, obviously ;-)



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Dinner of Aloneness

Husband is out tonight, so I have been eating Whatever I Like...
Broccoli stirfried with chilli, garlic and a bit of Thai fish sauce (inspired by the tasty dinner of @Effbeeee)



And bone marrow - roasted with capers, parsley, garlic and lemon. Yum.



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Extended Birthday Goodness

As many of you know (from my extensive Twitter Complain Campaign), husband has been taking metronidazole for a week for his tooth badness...
As a result, we were tragically forced to postpone my (already postponed because of opera) birthday dinner-treat till today.

We met after work for swift cocktails at Galvin Cafe a Vin (def going back here SOON for post work drinks/charcuterie/cheeeeeeeese), where they gave us dinky drinking snacks.

Then we moved on to HAWKSMOOOOOOR (which I have been looking forward to for some time now).

We went on Monday night, as they, splendidly, have a BYO policy (£5 corkage), which everyone seemed to be taking advantage of, in varying degrees of posh winery. We took this, which we've had stashed away, awaiting a good occasion. It was deeeeeeelicious.

I started with ribs (as recommended by Twitter mafia) and husband, smoked salmon (which, I surmise, probably came from Forman and Field - it certainly matched the stuff we had from them earlier in the year).
Ribs were every bit as good as I had expected. Yum.

We moved on to vast vast prime rib (1kg between two - we are officially FAT), accompanied by triple cooked chips (in a lovely cone), buttered greens and heritage tomato salad. All super awesome.

We ate it ALL.

We just about had capacity to share brownie and salted caramel ice cream for pudding (much saltier than usual - just how I like it - I always make my salted caramel things almost inedible for Normal People). Husband also drank tawny port.

We LOVED it.
As soon as we've digested this lot and saved up again, we'll be back to Hawksmoor. Probably on a cheery BYO Monday - the wine list looks great, actually, but this is hard to pass up.

I'd recommend to any meat eater. Awesome :-)

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020 7856 2154

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London.
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020 7247 7392

Saturday Steak

Bone in fillet from lovely East London Steak Co with roasted butternut squash and cauliflower.
You can't really see this, but it's also liberally sprinkled with truffle salt.
Very very good steak - best I've had for a really long time.

Very Quick Tea Yesterday

Portabello mushrooms stuffed with philadephia and lots of garlic...

And sweet chilli sauce, obviously.

6 minutes, at most!

Nearly Luxury Tea

Duck livers (that's *almost* foie gras, right? ;-) ) with extremely chilli garlicky broad beans (I cried)...




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Pasta

Pasta, wot I made with my lovely new Kenwood pasta attachment...

Not quite as good as the kind I used to make with my old manual mangley type pasta maker (less control over thickness etc), but super quick and easy :-)

Tagliatelle and (very) spicy tomato sauce. This one was for husband, hence the addition of chorizo. He is very happy to eat vegetarian meals, as long as they have meat with them...

Post Show Dinner

Final matinee of show DONE! Celebrating with runner beans, broad beans and chorizo.




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Back and Bakin'

Greetings, Loyal Readers (if, indeed, such people exist)...

For various reasons (and unreasons) I clearly haven't written anything here for AGES!
This is, at least partially, the fault of stupid iPhone, which is misbehaving badly at the moment - we have a so called Genius Bar appointment for tomorrow, so, fingers crossed, it will get sorted soon...

In the meantime, some baking...

A couple of days ago, I made birthday macarons (from the lovely Macarons book that I was lucky enough to win from Anne's Kitchen 's beautiful blog).

I usually make macarons using the Italian meringue method (faffy, but much easier and more consistent results), but these were French method recipes, so I thought I'd give it another go, and they actually turned out pretty well.
Not as attractive as the Italian ones, possibly, but properly melt in the mouth texture.
I might be a convert. Too early to say yet ;-)

So - here they are.
I'll do a better job with colourings etc next time, now that I properly have the hang of the method, but, that aside, I think they look ok.

Blueberry and mascarpone

Raspberry and white chocolate ganache

Lemon filled with (not quite enough) lemon curd

And, of course, the ubiquitous salted caramel