Giant Lamb Chops with Feta and Lemon

I’m pretty sure that this is a Nigel Slater recipe.  I marinated lamb chops in lemon zest, chopped garlic, fresh thyme, a squeeze of lemon juice, olive oil and seasoned.  Then cooked them on each side so the fat was charred and they were still a little pink inside.  I let the rest, dressed my salad leaves, used up the last of the pink coleslaw.  Then crumbled feta and squeezed lemon over the lamb. 

Tapas

Alright, pink coleslaw isn’t strictly spanish.  Dinner didn’t start off being tapas.  I made the coleslaw, then took a look at all the rest of the ingredients and the sunny evening and decided that it would be kind of spanish.

So I made Chorizo Patatas Bravas which involved roasting or deep frying cubed potatoes and making a spicy chorizo tomato sauce to pour over.

Found some langoustine at the supermarket and snapped them up. I fried them in a skillet with garlic butter for a few minutes then put a glass of white wine and popped them under the grill to finish them off.  I’ve never had langoustine before not over cooked, they were so sweet, I cannot stress how gorgeous the meat was.

Also made a bread and tomato salad with some stale bread, chopped tomatoes, garlic, basil leaves, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and salt and pepper.

Breakfast

Sausages with caramelised red onions in a baguette and tea.

Its all gravy

I found myself boasting the other day that it had been 2 years since I was sick last... 6 hours later I came down, very dramatically (fainted) with a bug.  Its been exhausting, made me feel like crap, I even had to take off work to get better and was wracked with guilt.  The night after it broke I only wanted mash potato, green vegetables, chicken and gravy.  So this is what we had.

Feta & Courgette fritters

Quite possibly the best thing ever. I was Introduced to this Gilbeys step mum. Its actually a turkish disk called Mucver, which is fairly appropriate because my grandfather was actually turkish. So its in the blood, I was meant to eat it.  Basically you can have this at anytime of the day and it will always taste timely, Barny had it the following morning for breakfast.

Grate two courgettes, salt and leave them in a sieve to drip for half an hour, this removes the water.  Then finely dice a shallot and 4 spring onions. Add quite a bit of thyme, some parsley, mint, a teaspoon of ground coriander, two beaten eggs, season and three table spoons of plain flour.  Mix together and then crumble in the feta cheese.  

You either shallow or deep fry the fritters.  Shallow fry and they look like patties like mine or deep fry and dollop them into balls.

I had mine with corn cob, chutney, salad leaves and sour cream.

Tacos.

I am developing an obsession with Mexican food and I want to nail the basics.   I thought tacos would be a good place to start because you can put whatever in them.  I made a guacamole, with the usual lemon, chilli, some grated garlic, salt & pepper.  Then a salsa (which incidentally was so much better the day after) with chilli, red onion, tomato flesh, garlic, cucumber, mint, parsley and lime juice.  Then I prepped the tacos, I couldn’t find any corn tacos so I bought flour tortillas and (wasteful) cut them into smaller circles then dry fried them on each side and laid them folded so they kept their shape.

The tricky bit was frying the chicken so that it tasted seasoned in the right way.  I mixed pepper, dried thyme, dried oregano, ground coriander, paprika, salt, grated red chilli and garlic, then a little tomato flesh and tomato puree and fried until it was all pretty dry on the outside but the chicken strips were still moist.

Served with cheese, rice, lettuce and sour cream with everything on the table so we could make our own.

Good Idea

This is a great food blog, Food Stories.  One of the things I like about it is she’s a witty writer.  I kinda feel that when I look back at some of my posts that a lot of them have a back-from-the-summer-holidays-and-writing-a-story-in-my-jotter-for-primary-school quality about them.  The other thing I love about her blog is that she writes about sandwiches and burgers.  I god damn love good sandwiches and I cannot think of anytime in my life when I haven’t picked up a menu and though “yep, I could definitely eat the burger”. 

Anyway a great idea that I thoroughly enjoyed was a soft boiled egg and hot butter soldiers with anchovies squished in on them.