Lobster - at last!

Week 52 of this project seemed to call for something extraordinary. Who'd have thought it would last a year?
And so, given that Lobster Thermidor was the first recipe onto the list it was time to finally cross it off.

Lobster is not a meal that you can just throw together easily - it required planning and skiving off work early to make it to the fishmonger before they closed. (I didn't think my colleagues would appreciate live lobsters crawling round the communal fridge all afternoon if I bought them at lunch time!)

So lobsters procured, I headed home to start the preparation.
Fortunately Dan had been away for a few days, so he wasn't there while I was preparing the lobsters. Which saved me from enduring him laughing himself silly when I jumped about 6 foot from shock when one of the lobsters wriggled as I picked it up. I'd put them in the freezer for an hour and expected them to be alot more lethargic than they were!

I decided to go with the Hugh F-W version of Lobster Thermidor, which uses bechemal sauce instead of double cream. I made a good thick sauce, then fried some shallots in a little butter until they were softened and added a glass of white wine. Once the wine had mostly reduced I added the bechemal and some tarragon, stirred everything together and allowed it to bubble for a minute or so. After that I seasoned it, added a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a small handful of grated gruyere. This can be set aside until needed.

So to the lobster.....I plunged it straight into a pot of rapidly boiling, heavily salted water, slammed the lid on and felt like a murderer.



It died fairly fast though, so I wasn't too badly traumatised. I don't imagine the lobster appreciated it much though. 12 -15 minutes later...voila...cooked lobster.



Then I had to dismember it - twist off the claws, crack them, and haul out the meat; cut the lobster in half, fish out the inedible bits; Mix the edible parts (including the claw meat) with the sauce made earlier, then pile it back into the lobster shells. Grate a little more gruyere over the top then whack it under a hot grill for 5 minutes.

I served it with crunchy bread and salad.



The occasion seemed to demand a fire in the room and a glass of champagne...




And then a treat for pudding. I have to confess that I didn't make it, but it was all the better for that. Passionfruit mousse cake from Patisserie Blanc.



Yum.

Yum Yum Dim Sum

Last night we had the best Chinese meal I've had in ages. Possibly ever. So although its not my cookery, I'm going to tell you about it anyway!

I had a race to run in Oxford after work and figured that it was more practical to have a meal out in town afterwards than to drive home and then start cooking late.

So, following up a top-tip we decided to go to SoJo; a very unassuming (and to be brutal, uninspiring!) looking place not far from the station. The word in cyberspace seemed univerally enthused, and everyone I mentioned it to in Oxford got a dreamy look in their eye, so it seemed worth a go.

You know the worst kind of chinese? The type that's swimming in grease? And where the noodles are soggy and over-cooked? And the flavours taste distinctly arificial? And you wake up the next day with a tummy that grumbles and is unhappy?
Well, SoJo is the polar opposite of all of that. It restores your faith in Chinese being interesting, flavoursome, and frankly delicious. Another thing - I would say that about 2/3 of the people eating at SoJo last night were Chinese, which is surely a good sign.

We shared a dim sum starter. I'd never had dim sum before, but I'll definitely be going back for more. We had a selection of steamed dim sum, and it all tasted fresh and delicious.



Then on to mains. Szechuan "Gan Shao" Seabass topped diced waterchestnut sauce for me - a pleasing contrast of soft textured fish and crunchy waterchestnuts, with enough chilli in the sauce to warm but not so much that it was uncomfortable. Dan had beef with aubergines and declared it amazing. (Whether he had more chilli I don't know, but it certainly cleared out the last of his summer cold sniffles!)

The portions were generous, but it was all so lovely that we just couldn't leave it...so we did go to bed feeling a little bit over full. Still once in a while that doesn't do anyone any harm I think! Next time I'm going back for a dim sum lunch. I'm already salivating at the thought.

Here's the link to the google page. The place doesn't have a website that I can find.

Seriously though - its my top tip. Go there!

More Riverford recipes

I'm still working my way through the Riverford Farm cook book which I bought in Devon. Its an amazingly useful book. I LOVE the fact that its full of fantastic ideas for vegetables.

So...ta dah! This week we had Mexican one-pot courgettes. I only made one amendment to the recipe, and that was enforced; the cream we had in the fridge had gone off so I used sheep's yoghurt instead.

Sorry, no photos - I was too hungry! We had our courgettes (cooked up in one-pot with cinnamon sticks, cloves, pepper, chilli, coriander and mint, yoghurt and tinned tomatoes) with pork loin chops and new potatoes. We both thought this would be great with chicken and rice, and possibly also good cold for work lunches.

It was easy. It was pretty quick. Low effort. Tasty. What's not to like?

I forgot to post last week's recipe - One of my Dad's recipe cards picked up in the supermarket a while back. It was lemon and basil chicken with pasta. It meant that we could have the first crop of peas grown by my own fair hands in our little vegetable plot.
Here's the recipe:

Lemon and basil chicken (for 2)

2 chicken breasts
Handful of basil leaves
Approx 50g fresh peas (or defrosted frozen ones)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon yoghurt or creme fraiche
Enough pasta for 2 people

Dice the chicken then stir fry it until there is no more pink showing. Stir in all of the other ingredients. Season with salt and black pepper. I also added a pink of smoked paprika but you don't need to. Heat through. Serve with cooked pasta.

It was easy, quick, filling and refreshing on the tastebuds.

PS You will notice that a lot of my recipes recently have been low-effort quick dishes. My explanation (excuse?) is that I'm currently training for a half marathon in 4 weeks time. I'm spending silly amounts of time running, which doesn't leave a lot of energy for complicated cookery!
Next week marks the 52nd of this project, ie a WHOLE YEAR. Who'd have thought I'd keep going for so long? Lobster here I come......

How does my garden grow?

We came back from a week in Wales to some very bedraggled looking tomato plants in our little vegetable plot. However, they are still covered in a hundred weight of green tomatoes. Having fried our green tomatoes a week or so ago I decided to have a try at doing something else with them. If they all survive to ripeness I will be very pleased and surprised, but we will also have a ridiculous number of tomatoes. Using some up early on seems like a good plan!

Its preserving time of year, and Dan loves a chutney with his curry, so I decided to try my hand at Green Tomato Chutney. I started from Mrs Beeston's (ripe) tomato chutney recipe, but added a few small chillies to give it a kick and some sultanas for sweetness since the green tomatoes are a bit less sweet than their ripe version.

Initial 'licking the spoon' taste tests seem positive; its got quite a kick from the cillies, but the flavours are good. This could go with curry or as a dip with poppadoms.



I've also had a go at green tomato salsa, and we've had the fried green tomatoes again, but with chorizo instead of smokey bacon this time, which was a better combination.

In other news, we had mussels cooked in cider rather than the traditional wine. Pretty good, but I think wine is ultimately the better choice.

Daring Cooks Challenge August

May I present this month's Daring Cook's challenge; pierogi.



Bear with me here. I know they don't look that tasty.

Pierogi are basically a heavier version of stuffed pasta as far as I can tell, although they were described in the recipe as a dumpling. They seem to be a Polish thing. The filling was a free choice but was meant to reflect your locality. I went for garlic, basil, goats cheese and whizzed up courgette. It may be tenuous, but we have a lot of basil in the garden right now and courgettes seem to be in season. The stuffing mix was a bit too liquid really but just about manageable.

Given how like a heavier stuffed tortellini pasta this was, I made a tomato sauce and toasted some pinenuts to sprinkle over the top.


I think I'll experiment with other fillings. I have a hunch that roast squash, garlic and pancetta would be a good combo.

The really good thing about this dinner was that the work could be done in advance leaving just boiling the pierogi for when you are ready to eat.

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

Fried Green Tomatoes

but not at the Whistle-Stop Cafe.

As I mentioned in my last post I spotted the recipe for these in my new cookbook, the Riverford Farm recipe book. And how could I resist the recipe when I have a vegetable patch completely taken over by monster tomato plants covered in not-yet-ripe tomatoes?



Another lure of the recipe was the opportunity to finally crack open my bag of polenta; an ingredient I have never used.

So I picked tomatoes, dipped them in egg then polenta. Fried some streaky bacon, then fried the tomatoes in the bacon fat. DONE (as Mr Ramsay would say).



They would make an excellent side dish, or part of a tapas selection. The same method would probably be nice with ripe tomatoes too, and a hint of paprika or chilli in the polenta could be good.

We had the tomatoes with new potatoes baked in parchment paper - the recipe came from the same book. I'd never thought to bake new potatoes before, but you just toss a handful of new potatoes in olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper. Parcel them up with a couple of cloves of garlice inside some baking parchment and bake for about 40 minutes. Simples.



So the verdict on the new cook book is a resounding thumbs up so far. The verdict on the tomato growing probably should be deferred until we see if they survive until they're ripe, but at least we've had one meal from the plants, and they were pretty good.

A little trip to Devon

A couple of days in Devon last week was the perfect antidote to the 9-5 blues.



The scenery was quintissentially English, all summer prettiness and hazy lazy sunshine.

We ate fish and chips and too much icecream.



We walked along the seafront and picked which boat we would have if we were the boating types.



We went to concerts in the impressive Great Hall at Dartington.

I ate my first ever whole crab - cracked the claws myself and everything!



We napped in the afternoon. And had bacon for breakfast.

We discovered that we were only a few miles from the Riverford Farm shop - the recipe for rhubarb and strawberry crumble which I made in May came from their website - so we stopped by and bought some fruit and veg on the way home. Yummy. Their website is here.

Aahhhhh.....if only it had been more than just a couple of days.

My take-home treat? I have aquired a copy of the Riverford Farm cook book, which is chock-full of brilliant ideas for vegetables; something which I think is overlooked in the majority of recipe books. This week I will be putting them (and myself) to the test when I attempt Fried Green Tomatoes. My monster tomato plants are currently covered in not-quite-ripe tomatoes, so this seems the perfect recipe to get a sneak preview of whether they're going to be any good.