A food blog from both sides of the pond
Tonight’s dinner is brought to you by Nick Nairn, Scottish chef extraordinaire, Val, my friend who cut the recipe out of the paper for me and Doug, who cooked while I watched a David Tennant as Doctor Who music video. This is a great week night supper, quick and easy to prepare and doesn’t need too many ingredients: chargrilled asparagus topped with a poached egg.
Let’s get this clear straight away for those non-Scottish folk. This isn’t a swear word (even though it would be a great one), it’s a traditional Scottish soup made with smoked haddock and mashed potato. While we were in Switzerland I was reading a book about British food and came back eager to make and eat some. This was the dish I really wanted to try and when I found some discounted haddock in Waitrose it seemed like a good excuse.
Allow me to preface this by saying: I have been watching a lot of Pushing Daisies lately, and the main character is a pie maker. So I’ve been craving pies.
Second preface: Around the time of our last contest, I coincidentally won a cookbook: Deborah Madison’s Seasonal Fruit Desserts. This has caused me to crave fresh fruit desserts.
So combined, what do you get? Me making a desperate trip to the grocery store to horde nectarines. I like them better than peaches, I’m not sure why, but probably because I get creeped out by non-mammalian fuzzy things. Peaches aren’t as bad as moths, but their fuzziness is something I still find creepy. And evil, I’m pretty sure things that shouldn’t be fuzzy but are: probably evil. So, that combined with having a pack of raspberries on hand, I decided to make a Nectarine-Raspberry Galette. Galettes are cooler than normal pies because…just look at them. They look cool. And if you’re handy with parchment paper they require very little clean-up. However, if you disagree that they look cool, or you want to use a pie dish, this can easily be made into a normal pie by taking the crust recipe and putting it into a pie dish instead. It’s like magic.
We just got back from a week spent outside Geneva in Switzerland with a few days spent on the banks of Lake Annecy in France. We stayed with Doug’s brother and his wife and their two beautiful children. It was blissfully relaxing and exhausting in turn depending on whether we were strolling casually around Geneva or clambering through a treetop adventure park. And of course we ate and drank very well. Did you expect anything else from me?
We ate salads that balanced chives on buttery avocado and ones with crispy croutons and pancetta.
There was a picnic lunch on the banks of Lake Geneva where we ate tart de fromage and something very similar to a pork pie bought from the local boulangerie. Continue Reading
Category : Drinks
I’m perfectly aware that there are places in this world that, for whatever unholy reason, are hot all the time. And, as such, maybe I don’t have a lot of ground from which to complain. However, I don’t live in Seattle because of a love for hot weather. I don’t hate sunshine, nor do I hate puppies or kittens or little girls in Easter dresses, but the latter options never make it so it’s 90+°F in a part of the country where sunglasses are mostly used when the clouds are too bright, and no one has AC. I work from home, so I can’t count on an office building keeping me cool either.
Needless to say, I’m not doing much cooking or baking.
So how ’bout some wine with that whine?
Category : Main Course, Meat
One of my favourite things to barbecue (or grill if you’re from the states) are kebabs. You look great for having brought something along but they also stretch the same amount of food out further than if you served it up straight. I love these simple kebabs, they are so easy to make and wonderfully tasty. I even dare to suggest that they are better than Nandos.
