Who says a roast is just for Sundays? Keep things simple and you can fit it in any night of the week. Roast beef, onions, butternut squash and new tatties tastes pretty good with a large glass bottle of wine on a Friday night.
How’s this for a quick midweek meal? Lemon and peppercorn smoked salmon, new tatties, spring onions and avocado. Very simple, delicious and healthy!
Would you believe the picture was taken on my mobile phone?
Here’s an example of American style IPA that seems to be an expected part of every brewery’s arsenal these days. This time from Lossiemouth brewery The Windswept Brewing Co. Plenty of hops, tastes great and goes down very nicely. Good to see another north east brewery delivering the goods!
The only time we ever cook duck in our house it ends up in pancakes with hoisin sauce. Which is, well, awesome but it’s nice to have a bit of variety. We happpened to have a bottle of creme de cassis in the house after making some Kir Royale during a cocktail night. This dish of very simply cooked duck breast with a brilliantly easy, fruity sauce is almost as easy as covering a leg in five spice and roasting it in the oven. read more…
Oh god I feel so bad just now. Thought I was done with colds for a while but it seems I was wrong. My whisky collection has taken quite a hit from it.
Can someone tell me what it was I didn’t like about wheat beer? I’ve been drinking heaps of the stuff recently and asking myself that very question. This Goose Island “urban wheat beer” is a good example – slightly cloudy with good citrus flavours. Really refreshing but not the standout wheat beer for me. The Nøgne Ø Wit is probably the nicest one I’ve had the pleasure to try.
Mount Keen from Broom Hill, above Tarland.
I’ve always been very impressed by Tom Kitchin’s cooking when I’ve seen him on the telly. As with so many chefs it seems that focussing on quality local ingredients is the key to success. I received his book on home cooking, Kitchin Suppers, at Christmas and have tried a couple of recipes from it already and enjoyed them hugely. It really helps that when I opened the book and flicked through it many of the recipes were along the same lines as a lot of my favourites! I knew this was a book I’d get along with.
This salad is from the weekday suppers chapter and is oh so simple. Boil a couple of eggs and some new tatties then serve as a salad with some lettuce, beetroot and smoked mackerel. There’s a lot of press coverage for mackerel at the moment which is a real shame as I absolutely love it. Hopefully it’s a problem that can be sensibly resolved soon. I made a very mustardy dressing to go with this and have to say I was a very happy boy after eating it. My eggs were perfect, just how I wanted them; only just hard-boiled. I can’t stand overcooked eggs. Unfortunately when it comes to boiling an egg I don’t often get a choice but that’s through my own ineptitude.
Tonight I wanted to do a bit of cooking to distract me from something but at the same time I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it. I was looking for maximum flavour, minimum effort. Which is a perfect job for the humble mushroom. Fried in some olive oil with a little garlic then gently simmered with half a can of tomatoes, some herbs and a few drops of hot pepper sauce resulted in a delicious quick meal to serve on buttered toast.
Every now and then I like to try and replicate a favourite restaurant dish. This time round it’s the turn of that Italian restaurant classic – veal milanese. I’m a big fan of veal – low in fat, high welfare (if bought from the UK) and it tastes great.
This dish is pretty simple. Blitz up some herby breadcrumbs, coat and cook the veal then leave somewhere warm while you cook the pasta with some sage and tomatoes. The whole thing can be cooked in under 20 minutes if you’re organised so it’s perfect for a mid-week meal read more…
