Garlicky Seafood Spaghetti - Tuesday 20th March 2012

Quick, tasty and nutritious, everything that could be wanted in a midweek dinner.  A pack of mixed seafood, some extra tiger prawns, crunchy golden croutons, garlic fried crispy in olive oil, some roughly chopped parsley. All just tossed into spaghetti. A lickety spit 15 mins from start to finish.

Including eating time.

Garlicky Seafood Spaghetti

Roast Lamb Salad with Thyme Dressing - Sunday March 19th 2012

We had a lovely roast lamb dinner on Saturday, slow cooked shoulder of lamb, so leftovers to use up on Sunday. Sliced up and mixed with warm new potatoes and mixed salad leaves with the delicious salad dressing recipe from the Guinea Fowl event on Thursday.

This is the original recipe:

4 tablespoons hazelnut oil

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 shallot finely chopped

1 teaspoon honey

Fresh thyme leaves


I didn't have any hazelnut oil, so used all olive oil. And I used whole grain mustard, as the seeds are nice in a dressing. 


You just pop all the ingredients into a bowl and whisk up to a nice creamy dressing, then drizzle over your salad. 

Roast Lamb Salad with Thyme Dressing

For St Paddy, Bacon and Colcannon - Friday March 16th 2012

In recognition of St. Patrick's Day on Saturday, I decided that Friday night's dinner would be bacon and cabbage in some form.  Gammon steaks are delicious just grilled so that the fat goes really crispy, and we had these with Colcannon and also Cauliflower with Parsley and Cheese sauce. 


My version of Colcannon is a relatively frugal take on the original as it has only a little butter, and no cream. I like lightly browned onions, freshly cooked or left over cabbage (any kind of cabbage) and freshly mashed potato, simply mixed together. (Any left overs of this are wonderful fried for breakfast by the way..)


So-bhlasta !


Gammon Steaks with Colcannon and Cauliflower with parsley and cheese sauce

Sausages with those fabulous Lentils we had the other week... Thursday March 15th 2012

I love this diary... Do you remember those fab lentils I made a few weeks back? I wanted them again, but couldn't quite remember what was in them. Cos I am an older person and have no memory cells left.

But Hey! I have a Diary Blog! And so I made the lentils again, with the addition of some fresh celeriac as well as the chopped celery. And it was equally as delicious. If you haven't made this, it takes all of 15 mins to make, and is well worth it.

Sausages with Fabulous Lentils

Pork Lemon and Thyme Meatballs with Thyme & Marsala Sauce, Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Everyone loves a meatball right?

These are pork with lemon and fresh thyme, in a light cream sauce with more thyme and lemon, and a nice side of steamed purple sprouting broccoli.

Pork Lemon and Thyme Meatballs with Thyme & Marsala Sauce, Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Smoked Guineafowl & Boudin Noir Salad with Sauteed Apples, Thyme & Mustard dressing- Tuesday 13th March

Fab evening with a lovely group of food bloggers learning all about French Guinea Fowl, we made and ate our own salads, and shared the fabulous stuffed ballotine that chef Andy Stephenson  made for us.

Smoked Guineafowl & Boudin Noir Salad with Sauteed Apples, Thyme & Mustard dressing

(We are very restrained we bloggers. When a large platter of delicious food hits the table, we reach for our cameras before our forks...)

With thanks to Sopexa for the invitation, and Divertimenti for their hospitality, and Andy for the cooking :) 

Spatchcocked Poussin with Celery & Pinenut Stuffing - Sunday March 11th 2012

Fabulous little roast poussin, stuffed under the skin, with proper roast potatoes and cabbage. Delicious Sunday Dinner!

I've explained just how to spatchcock and stuff the poussin over on A Greedy Piglet, do let me know how you get on.

Spatchcocked Poussin with Celery and Pinenut Stuffing

Retro Pie Day Two - Carrot & Leek Homity Pie & more coleslaw - Saturday March 10 2012

More Homity pie today with the addition of carrot and leek, and Jarlsberg and gruyere cheese in the mix.

And instructions on how to make the pie now in A Greedy Piglet, just for you to keep frugal..

Today's coleslaw is lots of carrot, sweetheart cabbage, red onion and celery, bound with a mixture of mayonnaise and Orange and fennel vinegar (home made, but you could happily use Womersley Orange and Mace Dressing) with black sesame seeds.

Carrot and Leek Homity Pie with Sweetheart Cabbage and Carrot Coleslaw

Retro Pie Day -Cranks Homity Pie & Crush Lemon Coleslaw - Friday 9th March 2012

It was British Pie Week this week, and all week I had been meaning to make a pie of some kind.  And it was also Eat Up The Fridge Week in the Clark household, so I was not about to buy anything new to make my pie.

A Twitter conversation a few weeks ago with Carl Legge about the seminal dishes from Cranks the famous vegetarian restaurant, in their time at Marshall Street just off Carnaby Street back in the 70s, had me thinking about some of the dishes I had loved from there - I had lunch at least a couple of days a week when I first started work in the West End in the mid 1970s.

One that was particularly delicious was Homity pie, a deceptively simple dish of potatoes onions and cheese in a pastry case. My version isn't the same exactly as the Cranks' one, the pastry is considerably less concrete-like than their was, but it was then, and still is now, extremely moreish and delicious. One to be blogged in detail at some time on The Greedy Piglet I promise.

Crank's Homity Pie with Crush Lemon Dressing Coleslaw

Amazing Crush Lemon Coleslaw with Frugal Sorta Chile - Tuesday March 6th 2012

Still frugally eating only what is already in the house, until I have nothing left that can make a decent meal. Today's foray should have been Chile con Carne, but I found out that I had no kidney beans, no chili spice, no cumin to make my own chile spice, no coriander and no yoghurt or sour cream.

So the Sorta chile has borlotti beans, smoked paprika, oregano and the sharp element came in the coleslaw.

Chile with borlotti beans is just a brown thing, delicious as it may be, so I want you to home in on the coleslaw in this picture.  Shredded red cabbage and carrots, finely sliced celery and red onion, poppy seeds & sesame seeds dressed in Crush's latest Lemon Dressing, it was simply divine!  The Lemon Dressing isn't up on the website yet, it is that new, I picked up a bottle at FeastEast at the weekend. Get some if you can, ask Brendan on Twitter  or Steve on Facebook I'm sure they'll find you a stockist.

Amazing Lemon Coleslaw with Borlotti Bean Chile on the side

Leftover Meatball and Black Pudding Frog in the Hole - Monday March 5th 2012

Leftovers.

Got to love leftovers. Even leftover meatballs, the ones that didn't go in the tomato sauce (tomato sauce in a toad (or a frog as only sausages make a toad) would be pushing it a little too far even for me.) and some hanging-around black pudding, and the odd pack of cubed pancetta. Mmmm. Meatfest.

Plus Yorkshire pudding. With herbs in.

You got the picture?

Leftover Meatball and Black Pudding Frog in the Hole

New York Pasta and Meatballs - Sunday March 4th 2012

Do you remember this from your childhood?  It was my favourite film when I was little, and for me, meatballs are, and always will be, Tramp and his Lady.





So when Dreamfields (who are American, like Tramp) kindly sent me some low carb pasta to try out,

then there could only be one result,

New York Penne with Meatballs...Ok it should have been spaghetti, but the Dearly Beloved voted for the Penne..

And I have to report that I was very pleasantly surprised. OK, it isn't lovely rough bronze die cut artisan pasta, but it IS pasta, and tastes like pasta. Which I wasn't at all sure it would being as it has been modified to reduce the amount of digestible carbohydrate.  Which makes it ideal for people eating a low carb or low GI diet, or who have dietary needs, such as diabetes.  I think for these people, this is a viable alternative to very small portions of ordinary pasta.

Although for me, who has no such requirements, I would have to say I will probably stick to my artisan pasta, as this costs roughly the same. But a qualified recommendation nevertheless. If you fancy winning some Dreamfields pasta to try yourself, there is a sweepstake on their Facebook page, so have a look, you may be lucky!

With thanks to Dreamfield for the pasta samples. There is a list of retailers on their website and also details of how to buy online.  

Sausage Toad in the Hole, Roast Beetroot, Glazed Shallots - Friday March 2nd 2012

Lots of rather ordinary repeated dinners recently, hence the hiatus, but Friday we had a smashing toad in the hole. For those of  non-UK origin, I hasten to reassure you that a Toad in the Hole has no toads (or frogs for that matter) involved in its making. We are not French after all...

A good Toad in the Hole should have nicely browned sausages in it, not nasty pallid little worms, so I like to cook mine before adding the batter. And like Yorkshire puddings, the fat must be hot hot hot before the batter goes in, so that it will rise up round the sausages, all light crispy and with lots of holes to fill up with gravy.


Toad in the Hole with Roast Beetroot and Glazed Shallots