Noodletastic!

Very hot potato curry, noodles, and parathas for brekkie this morning

I added a grilled tomato for extra vitamin value!

Dan added some bacon, and some steamed bun things, to his curry and noodles.

Makes a change from museli :)

My 1st Bento Attempts

Hmmm, I'm not very creative, so some of the pictures on the Bento Box flickr pool leave me astounded. However, I think I've managed to make a quite pretty lunch...

1/3 of the box is filled with basmati rice, into which I chopped a couple of spring onions. Carrot batons around the edges of the rice. The middle 3rd is salad leaves (underneath) with alfalfa and sprouted peas on top.

The final 3rd is split into 1/2 protein (chicken pieces, a baby bel and a slice of ham) and 1/2 fruit (strawberry, pineapple, and some melon)

I think it's quite appealing and certainly has lots of colours.

I've ordered some cookie cutter shapes so I'll update this with some more pics when I've got the carrot stars in the mix!

 

Cooking By Numbers

As Li has mentioned we can just about eat anything and enjoy working out what to put togther when we have a swede, stick of celery, mars bar and a dishcloth.

Well it seems there are other people out there who also do and i found this website . Enjoy

Creative Cookery

We're pretty creative when it comes to our cooking - we will cook, and eat, mostly anything.


This week's cold snap has, however, pushed us to our creative limits. We've not really been out of the house for a week, and the last shopping was the Sainsbury's truck arrival on Sunday, hence we're seriously getting to the bottom of the barrel when it comes to fresh ingredients to make our food with - and not leaving the house, we're eating breakfast lunch and dinner here at home!

So, what has our creativity run to in the last few days?

Firstly, I'm a big believer in the freezer! We freeze both bread and milk and so those supplies haven't been a problem.

Sunday night we discovered 2 packets of Ostrich Mince which we bought earlier on in the year from Leeds Farmers Market - this went into a spectacular bolognaise.

Last night we broke out some frozen sausages + using the remains of about 4 (pretty manky) potatoes + 4 eggs + a bit of stilton = delicious frittata - this also did for our brekkie today!

Today we going for.. a tin of water chestnuts, a tin of bamboo shoots, half a butternut squash, a pinch of dried shrimp, and some Tom Yam Paste to make an interesting Tom Yam soup.

We have found some really interesting ingredients at the back of the cupboard so we're not Old Mother Hubbard yet...yet to be used

Tins of tuna and tins of mixed bean - great for salad.
Tortilla wraps - a great find - will substitute for bread
In addition we still have tins of peas, beans and soups

  I'm thinking we have a few more days of the Creative Cupboard Extravaganza to go!

 

 

When Creme Brulee goes wrong...

...you get vanilla flavoured scrambled eggs! I never knew that.

I'm a first time creme brulee maker. I thought it looked lovely and simple.

Cream, sugar, vanilla, and some orange zest and Cointreau as this was going to be an orangey flavoured one.

Some whisking, and some bringing up to simmer heat. A bit of combining of ingredients, and in to the pots. Don't they look perfect?

The recipe I was using was an American one, and I quickly googled the phrase "convert 325 degrees f to celcius". If you click on my link, you'll see the results I got. The 1st link returned contained the snippet of a phrase "325 F to Celsius 169 C."

Aha, 170 degrees I thought.

In went the lovely creamy creme brulee pots. With Cointreau. And expensive Madagascan vanilla.

We set the timer for 20 minutes. The recipe said 40 but it's always good to go and have a look after a bit.

At 20 minutes, we could see the tops getting quite brown.

Well, I know they're supposed to go brown after the sugar gets caramelised on the top - but brown before leaving the oven? I wasn't so sure.

I had another check on the website for the recipe. I googled the temperature conversion again. This time I used 'Centigrade' instead of 'Celsius'. The results came back looking like this.

Nealy 10 degrees cooler.

Ooops.

By the time I realised the oven was way too hot, and had whipped the brulees out of there, it was too late.

We had Cointreau and Vanilla flavoured scrambled egg.

Note, in the pictures, the lovely gathering of Madagascan vanilla seeds in the bottom of the concoction. Imagine how nice it should have tasted. Weep for the cream, sugar and Cointreau which will now go in the bin.

Christmas Food

We've been cooking and eating all day.

No surprise there!

Obviously we've been documenting it with photographs - the picasa web album is here.

Culinary highlights have been

1. The home made cranberry sauce
2. The Kelly Bronze Turkey

We're stuffed. A bit like the turkey!!!

It's c..c..c..cold out there!

I've just been out in the lean-to to get a bottle of wine. We use it as an enormous fridge in the winter as it's not heated and so tends to be close to the outside temperature.

The bottle was really really cold.

Because it's the sort of thing I do, I wondered how cold the wine actually was.

So, I measured the temperature of the wine in the bottle using my milk thermometer (the gadget that I use for making sure the milk doesn't boil when making my morning cappuccino). It's an American model so counts in Fahrenheit, (see photo) but nevertheless I was quite impressed to see the gauge read at 38 degrees F. That's about 3.3 degrees C. (Note, photo taken after the wine, thermometer and I had been sitting in the superheated lounge for about an hour!)

3.3 degrees is pretty cold on any scale, especially given that the wine was kept (a) indoors and (b) not in the fridge!

I then thought I'd check out what water kept at room temperature in the kitchen measured. (Nothing scientific here, it was just because I spotted a glass of water on the side which had been there all day!)

It measured 50 degrees F which is 10 degrees C. Brrrr. That's cold for room temp in our kitchen isn't it? My excuse is that we'd only just come in from work and the heating hadn't been on long!

Finally I thought, I wonder what the temperature is of the wine in the fridge? This is where the experiment was *really* headed.

I watched the needle go down, down, down, and then stop at 41 degrees F which is 5 degrees C.
 
1.3 degrees warmer than the wine out in the lean-to!

Amazing!

 

Hot Toddy

Because I've got a cold...

...we thought we'd break out the mulled wine from the delicious Cairn O'Mohr brewery in Scotland!



Look at that steam coming out of the mug!!!!

Made fish and chips!

...for tea the other night. Yes, real fish in batter. It was GORGE!

Yummy Pizza

Oh, we had a DELICIOUS tea last night - home made Pizza. A ~slight~ cheat as we used ASDA Pizza base mix. Not too much of a cheat though, it saves the weighing out of the yeast & flour, all you add is the water, but you still have to kneed the dough and leave it to rise.

In the meantime we cooked the remaining meatballs from Saturday night's dinner, made a little tomato sauce, and prepared the pizza stone by heating it in the oven.

The results were SOOOOO tasty that we've had part 2 of the leftover pizza, cold, for tea tonight - and it's STILL fantastic!

How good does that look? Yum!

Lovely tea last night

Mmmmmmm! Dan's been cooking again. I know it looks like squash, but Dan has made his first foray into the world of carrot soup! Completely delicious. Just a little hint of lemon and pepper. Otherwise it was aaaaaaaaaalllllll carrot!

So, that was the starters! For mains it was fillet steak butties on soft white bread. YUMMMEEEE!

I'm so spoiled!

Pork Pie of Lurve

Dan blobbed a bit of brown sauce on a mini Melton Mowbray pork pie last night and look how it turned out...


He couldn't have done it better if he tried!

Mango mango!

Dan came home from ASDA the other day with 4 mangos. They were only £1 each! I've not ever cooked with them although I am partial to a glass mango & orange juice in the mornings.

So, I've been looking up mango recipes online and have decided to make a couple of different things. Well, 3 actually.

Part 1 - Mangos 1 & 2 have been used to make mango lassi, our favourite drink when going out to the Aagrah in Garforth.

I'd never cut a mango before today and so had to look it up - I don't like attempting anything without knowing the 'proper way' to do it - but when I did, it was so pretty, I had to take a pic...looks a bit like an orange hedgehog!

The lassi is basically blended mango, yoghurt, milk and sugar. It's a luxury smoothie!

Part 2 - hasn't been completed yet but mango no 3 is going to be a mango salsa

Part 3 - mango chutney is in store for mango no 4 (do I dare?)

More pics of the 'making of mango lassi' are here on picasa.

Yo!

Can't have Dan's blogging overtaking mine - so I'd better post something new PDQ.

Last Saturday, after working for most of the day, we took a fit of the head staggers and decided to try out Yo! Sushi in Leeds. I'm SOOOOOOO glad we did!

Firstly, it's on the top floor of Harvey Nichols - right next to the bag section (always a good thing) so you have to wander through the store to get there. We arrived at about 4:30, just as the shoppers were beginning to leave town - and there was loads of space in the restaurant, before the Saturday night crowd started in.

The manager came over and settled us into a booth, beside the moving conveyor belt of colourful plates of exquisite little morsels. He explained how it all worked. Water, tea and miso soup are all 'bottomless'. Cold sushi/sashimi dishes are all on the belt. Pictures & descriptions of all the dishes are in the little book - you look and then work out what it is. Hot dishes you have to order - you do this by pressing the button on the table and your waitress comes to take the order.

The final part is that you pay by them adding up the plates you've eaten - each plate has a coloured rim, indicating the price of the item on the plate. 3 greens, 2 purples, 4 blues. You pay at the desk! Fantastic.

Ice Cream Trouble

I've not ever had a problem eating ice-cream before but today, I managed to drop the whole of a 3 flavour cone down my front!

Birthday Lunch - more info

So, birthday lunchings were at 'Osteria Da Franz' famous in Venice for the seafood dishes. Franz himself cooked and served.

For my starter I had tartre of swordfish, Dan had the baby octopus

Mains: Dan had seabass, I had fiori di zuccha stuffed with cod

In between was a pasta course which we shared – spaghetti in a tomato sauce with sweet scampi and chilli

After was a really really good tiramisu followed by killer coffee and biccies.

I had no idea until I looked on the website that loads of famous people go there! Check out Nichoas Cage!

L'olio Nuovo

OK so I know I'm Italian, but, we get our olive oil from a Greek guy at Leeds Farmer's Market. We got our first 20 litres about 18 months ago after having been at the market, tasted the oil and then bought a single litre. It was the nicest oil either of us had tasted for some time - and we buy a lot of expensive oil. So Dan did his thing, sent an email and negotiated a price. I think we paid about £7.50 a litre. It was really good oil!

Anyway, we've run out only recently and as we were running short, Dan emailed the guy again.
"Wait for the new oil" he said. "It's going to be delicious". So we did. And today we've just been to the market for our next 30 litres! It's SOOOOO nice, that I think poor Lisa, Malc & Simon are going to be getting just bread dipped in olive oil for their lunch!

So not that this is an advertising website (but it is bloody good oil) if you want to chat to him, his email is here --> ykardamakis@yahoo.co.uk
He's at the Farmer's market in Leeds which is 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month. Of course, if you just want to taste the oil - invite yourselves round for a tasting session. We still have a miniscule drop left of last years, and it's interesting to compare the peppery sharpness of the new oil (which I love) with the soft smoothness of the mature oil. YUMMMY!

Best Hot and Sour Soup EVER!

Dan's just made some soup for my tea. It's THE BEST SOUP EVER! Can't say much more than if I had to choose a food to eat for the rest of my life - it'd be this.

Picasso at the Bellagio

Well, so far our only 2 Michelin star experience has been at Pied a Terre in London, at which we had a really SUPERB experience. So, we were really looking forward to our dinner at Picasso, a 2 star restaurant in the Bellagio hotel on the Vegas strip.

Well it all started off well as we walked into the Bellagio - one of the posher hotels on the strip. The interior was rather more tasteful than some of the others; some lovely touches - glass umbrellas suspended from the ceiling, a garden of fountains and flowers in the conservatory. It was lovely. We wandered through the hotel and got to the restaurant. A bit early, but we thought we'd get a drink at the bar to kill time if needed. There was no need. "Would you like to sit outside?" the Maitre d' asked. Did we ever! All the reviews of the restaurant had said 'try to get a table outside on the balcony' so we really didn't need asking twice!

We were shown to the table. It really was the best in the house. As you can see; right on the lakeside with a great view back down the strip (we could even see the Eiffel Tower!)

So we were given the menu - we already knew we were going to have the menu degustation (with the accompnying wine menu) and then all we needed to decide on was which of the lovely bread options were we going to have!

The sommelier came out and painted such a wonderful picture of the wine we were about to taste with the first course, that we were completely transfixed. Then the 1st course was placed in front of us. At that exact moment, the music started and the fountain display began. It was so perfect that I have to confess to a small amount of emotion (what a surprise!) we clinked our glasses and vowed to remember everything about it.

The taster menu consisted of several small courses...

Maine Lobster Salad
with Apple-Champagne Vinaigrette
2006 Morgadío, Albariño, Rías Baixas, Galicia, Spain

Pan Seared Sea Scallops
with Potato Mousseline and Jus de Veau
2006 Domaines Schlumberger, Les Princes Abbés, Pinot Gris, Alsace, France

Sautéed "A" Steak of Foie Gras
with Roasted Peaches, Vanilla, Muscat and Crushed Almonds
2004 Maculan, Torcolato, Breganze, Veneto, Italy

...then a choice between

Sautéed Filet of Halibut
with Sautéed Royal Trumpet Mushrooms and Roasted Sunchokes
2005 Château La Nerthe, Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc, Rhône Valley, France

or

Roasted Aged Lamb Chop
with Ragout of Flageolets and Mushrooms
2005 Dominio De Tares, Baltos, Bierzo, Spain

I had the halibut and Dan had the Lamb, in the only choice of the menu. Nick also had the Lamb and Laura had the veggie menu - which, it has to be said, was every bit as wonderful as the other menu.

OK so how do I describe the food - and more than that, how do I describe the combination of the food and the wine. It's really difficult unless you've experienced this sort of thing before. When we went to Pied-A-Terre, we had a similarly amazing experience with a couple of the food wine combination. Some are good, but some actually blow your mind!

Imagine food being placed in front of you which is so beautifully presented that it's like a work of art. It's almost too good to eat! Then take a forkful of food and it's the nicest thing you've ever tasted. You try to eat slowly to make the flavour stay in your mouth longer! Then, with the food flavour still in your mouth, you take a sip of the wine, and BOOM, the 2 flavours explode into the most sublime combination. It's hard to explain!

Anyway, this meal was like that. Every course. With music. And Fountains!

I'm sorry now that we didn't take pictures of the food courses. We were a bit reluctant because in Pied-a-terre they'd specified no cameras. However we did take pictures of the desserts and noone said a thing so possibly it'd have been OK throughout the meal.


These were Nick's (left) and Laura's (right) desserts.

I haven't got the flowery descriptions from the menu - just to say Nick's was full on chocolate fondant, and Laura's was a coffee pyramid!

Dan's was a panna cotta (bottom left) and mine was a grapefruit cream soda (bottom right)

Each one was a work of art.

All the way through the evening, the fountains coordinating with each course, highlighting a fact that I never knew before; that Michelin star food could be enhanced by music and fountains!

Piggalino

Well Happy New Year!

By way of starting the new year in the way we'd like it to continue, we went to the farm at Yorkshire Meats to pick up our little pig.

"What pig?" I'm sure you're asking. Well, 6 months ago we put a deposit down on a pig at the farm. This week we were told that the pig was going to the abattoir and the meat would be ready at the weekend.

So, off we went to the farm - just outside of York - and met Duncan, who was expecting us. He initially took us to meet the 3.5 month old pigs out in the field.

They came racing out to meat us and as we stepped in to the field they were snuffling around our legs and leaving little nose prints on our jeans! They were SO cute, but the most surprising thing about them was that they were ORANGE! No pink here, or at least not much. They were all shades from a pale peach to a dark orange!!! The breed is called the Oxford Sandy and Black. The breed description reads....

• Medium to large pig
• Lop or semi-lop ears
• White blaze, feet and tassel are characteristic
• Head moderately long with a slightly dished muzzle
• A good sandy coat (ranging from pale sandy to rust) with random black patches

Dan made a particular friend (as you can tell by the close-up!) as he was knelt in amongst the little creatures. They were all snuffling around him and eating his shoe laces! Very cute!
So then we went to have a look at the 2 sows. Both of them had had piglets in the last month. They were adorable!!!

The photo doesn't really do them justice as the warming lamp was making the light a bit wierd in the pen. Here are pics of another of the sets of piglets from the website --> piglets. I wanted to nick one and put it in my bag....I liked the little ginger ones the best!