What are you having for supper tonight?

[rafletcher]

Rump steak, garlic mash, tender stem broccoli. And to drink, Tapa Roja from Marks, great value at £7 a bottle.

[Basil]

Hopefully nothing.  I am still stuffed from today's lunch down at the Porth Hotel. 
Well, maybe some chocolate orange.   Maybe with cheese and cheese sticks. Maybe a glass of wine.
Maybe.

[rafletcher]

Kedgeree. Lovely!

[SteveC]

We had tuna steaks. They were not the thickest I've ever seen and two minutes a side was OK, less would have been better, more would have been a mistake.
Tasted good, though.

[Basil]

Lazy day.  Reheated remains of yesterday's turkey and ham pie. (Huge and home made, hence the remaining portions) Oven chips and baked beans.  With a large G&T.
Just heaven.  (And hardly any washing up  )

[rafletcher]

Arancini & salad. My wife popped into town for some mous traps - and also decided to have a look at the (relatively) new Italian sandwich / deli / supper club place, and came away with some of the aforesaid arancini.

[ian]

Burritos.

I made some kind of pibil-ish filling (it's still in the slow cooker) – chicken, onion, peppers, orange juice, achiote, cumin, garlic granules, oregano, chillis and some more chillis and then some more chilli. I feel it may not tick the authenticity boxes, but I also feel it's going to be good. And spicy. I also have ninja rolling technique.

It's going to make me nostalgic for LA food trucks.

[Feanor]

The hot weather has made for a rather indulgent outdoor dinner.
A Mediterranean / Middle Eastern mezze style feast.

The recipes are all from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sabrina Ghayour.

It's a shame there's nowhere in Aberdeen you can get this kind of food. Nargile is probably the closest.
This is possibly my very favourite food!


Mezze by Ron Lowe, on Flickr

[Mrs Pingu]

Mmm, that looks good.

[Canardly]

Does look a bit yummy.

[Feanor]

Well, last night (but I'm having leftovers tonight, so it counts!)...

I got a Dishoom recipe book for Christmas, and it's taken till now to actually make something from it.
I might have though that Ottolenghi was fiddly, but...


Spice Mix by Ron Lowe, on Flickr

The recipies can best be desribed as 'recursive'.
So for this curry, we first must marinate the meat. Fine, let's make the marinade. See P94.
Right, so this in turn requires pastes and spice mixes. See Pages 230, 235, 250.
And each of these in turn requires further sub-recipies.
Where the hell is the actual starting point?
"1) Starting two weeks ago, take your fermented unobtanium-berry paste..."

Someone noted that it sounded like a Haynes Manual: First, remove the engine...

The photo above is toasting a spice mix, prior to grinding it down.
Got through it all in the end, and it was proper good.

[Mrs Pingu]

Not something you make on a whim then...?

[Feanor]

It's one of these things that takes all day to make, and 10 minutes to eat.
Harry came to help with the eating bit.

For a larger group, you would want to do an awful lot of this the day before, and it does lend itself to that.

I suspect that some of these restaurant-based cookbooks are actually intended for people to just say "Jeez, fuck that! Let's just go to the restaurant!"

[Hot Flatus]

Buccatini Cacio e pepe, but with zatar mixed in at the frothing butter stage. Topped with marinated roasted aubergines and peppers and mozzarella.

Feel quick sick now actually.

[Peter]

Boiled eggs.

[Feanor]

Boiled eggs.

Nothing wrong with that, it was my lunch!

We went Up A Hill today, and the sammiches were hegg mayo, which is something I like in a sammich.
A couple of 'ard boiled hegggs and a bit of mayo is the sammich filling of the gods.
Much more betterer even than Tuna mayo.

[andrewc]

Tortiglioni with prawns & mussels in a tomato & chilli sauce.

[spesh]

It's one of these things that takes all day to make, and 10 minutes to eat.
Harry came to help with the eating bit.

For a larger group, you would want to do an awful lot of this the day before, and it does lend itself to that.

I suspect that some of these restaurant-based cookbooks are actually intended for people to just say "Jeez, fuck that! Let's just go to the restaurant!"

While leaving the books in the "see how sophisticated I am" pile on the coffee table? 

[Wowbagger]

We ordered a takeaway curry. There's some left for tomorrow.

[rafletcher]

Our first hot meal for a week, poached (or possibly scrambled with added chives and parsley) eggs on toast with grilled (unsmoked Wiltshire cure back) bacon. 

[CrazyEnglishTriathlete]

A bottle of vin santo from Lidl and a packet of Cantuccini biscuits. 

[Feanor]

I am home alone, find myself in need of simple comfort food.

So mac+cheez+chips it is.
I've done a slightly posh version, because it really didn't add much more time.

The Mac +  cheez has a bunch of chorizo in it. I had some to use up.  I was just making-it-up-as-I-went-along, so I added it just after the flour when making the roux, letting it cook down with the flour before I started adding the milk because I wanted the oils from the chorizo to infuse through the whole sauce, rather than adding it at the end.  This worked well.

The cheez is a Costco grated Grana Padano, which is a hard cheez, like parmesan, but perhaps a little milder.  I'm converted to using this as Generic Cheez for almost everything, where I might have previously used Mousetrap Cheddar.  As a hard cheez, it adds the requisite cheeziness but does not leave the sauce floating in oil.

The chips were replaced by my rose harissa roast tatties, which are so simple to make that oven-chaps make no sense.


Posh mac cheez n chips by Ron Lowe, on Flickr

Yea, not exactly a one-person portion, is it?

[andrewc]

I bought a packet of "reduced price" sausages at M&S.   Sliced an onion & 2 red peppers, fried them in olive oil seasoned with garlic & chilli. Sliced the sausages into small pieces, chucked them in then added a tin of Mutti Polpa (chopped tomatoes).  Covered the pan & left to simmer for a bit, then uncovered to reduce a bit.


I had one portion with rice earlier in the week, and have just had the second with chunks of slightly stale bread thrown in to soak up the juices.  Very nice 

[slope]

a tin of Mutti Polpa (chopped tomatoes).

At 'Snowdon Towers', it has been considered for a while now, that Mutti (and similar tinned San Marzano) are worth the price related to quality and flavour. No more so on home made pizza

[pcolbeck]

Proper Italian tinned tomatoes are one of those things where its definitely worth paying a bot more for.