A lovely mid week dinner.

I’ve  had a boeuf bourguignon in here already, so I won’t be going into details, it was made in my nice new casserole dish – needed a new one, as I’m very good at smashing them, but what was lovely, was the mash. I threw the boiled, mashed spuds into the pan of fried bacon and leeks, added some butter  for extra healthiness, plus some seasoning. Loved it. Deep, deep flavours.

Caramelised pear fool.

Inspired by a current series of Masterchef. I was just sitting and watching some telly boy making a rhubarb fool with biscuits, while my boeuf bourguignon was nearly done in the oven, my potatoes were nearly soft,   I was thinking – I need a dessert, it’s been a lovely, warm, sunny day off, we’ve had lunch at the river in Kingston, I need a nice finishing touch.

So I made some  nice, quick caramel, threw some chopped pears in, left them in for about 7 minutes and cooled them. I whipped the cream with icing sugar and vanilla paste, as usual, with a touch of lemon juice.  And layered  it all nicely, topped with toasted flaked almonds and some grated chocolate. Nice, very sweet, but nice.

Berry Slump, determination paid off.

I did make more Chinese tonight, nice beef stir fry, on the photo it looks too similar to the one I made last night, so will give it a miss, when it comes to blogging. I also baked a pear cake for dessert, simple recipe from Good Food, but the damn thing didn’t bake properly. It went to the bin, I got pissed off, thought for a minute and went back to the kitchen with a selection of vocabulary that helped me express the fact, that I wanted a dessert!! There were frozen berries, there was Ambrosia and all the other necessary ingredients, so a Berry Slump was made,  like in the original recipe, not with nectarines, with berries. Softened quickly in the pan with a splash of water and baked off under the mix of butter, self raising flour, sugar( all in the amount of 50 g), 2 eggs and vanilla paste, just as in the recipe months ago, lots of flaked almonds on top, 40 minutes in the medium hot oven. I ended up with a yummy sponge on a sour berries, with a lovely crunchy almonds on top. Simple, but lovely.

Sweet and sour pork

Florian suggested something Asian, when I asked what he feels like eating. Books have been looked through, web has been searched, recipes have been compared, Waitrose has been visited ( for the kurwa 47th time this week!!!) .

The best s/s pork I remember having was Alex’s at work, the only problem with it was the quantity, as far as I remember, cause the pan was being scraped, so I attempted to make mine at least that good. I think I succeeded.

I used a small pork fillet, thinly sliced it and fried in the wok. Added 2 cloves of garlic, crushed, a red onion, chopped bell pepper, some mange tout, some cup mushrooms, a carrot and a zucchini. Fried it up, added a chopped pineapple and a handful of beansprouts and then added the s/s sauce-; I used about 150ml of juice from under the pineapple, 3 tbsp of ketchup, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, a tbsp of white wine vinegar, same amount of honey and cornstarch. All this went into the wok and thickened nicely after a couple of minutes.  I served it on a nice steamed rice. Very pleased with it, but tomorrow will make some more Chinese I think, lots of stuff in the fridge to be used.

Fillet steak with Spicy Korean sauce

Can’t believe it’s that long since I posted here last time.

Moka came over all the way from Paris this morning and is staying till Saturday, so I made some good food for her tonight, drowned in a bottle of wine. All this resulted in our early departure for bed…

The Chief gave me some Korean spicy  sauce that is used at work to serve chargrilled  wagyu and pork with, I bought 3 nice beef fillets, some nice greens- beans, baby courgettes and broccoli, steamed them first and then finished off on the pan. Steaks were cooked medium rare, just the way we like them, served with mustard mash, lovely sauce and greens. Yum.