The photo’s not great, because I was surprised at how good this dish was, so I took the photo while eating it. I was chatting with Jedrus on the phone and came up with this dish of goodness.  The cod was sat on a bed of – I’d like to say rattatuille, but I’m not sure if what I made was it. It was a selection of veggies- red pepper, half a courgette, a shallot, all fried on 2 small pieces of cooking chorizo and a rasher of bacon. A handful of cherry tomatoes went in, a splash of ketchup, some oregano. I also threw in  a few pre boiled potatoes in small pieces.

The cod simply seasoned, covered with crust made of various herbs from the garden, some breadcrumbs and parmesan. Might have added some garlic, actually.

All this baked in the oven for about 20 minutes. Excellent, unexpectedly! 🙂

From yesterday’s Saturday Kitchen.  Fat boy Antonio caught my attention when he made a brief introduction to the world’s most famous sauce, saying “you’ve probably been doing it wrong all your life”.  I took notes of what he was doing on the telly, Florian demanded this is what we’re having for dinner and we got all we needed in Sainsbury’s this morning.  Half way through making it I researched what I could find on Antonio’s bolognese online and I wished I’d done it before I started.  The recipe on telly called on just onions fried on butter and olive oil, a touch of garlic and then onto that lean minced beef and lean minced pork, half and half. The recipe online stuck to what I’ve always been doing- onion, carrot, celery and garlic.  That’s what I’ll be sticking to, the flavour of the veggies is irreplaceable.

The idea of pork and beef rocks though. The texture of the sauce is lovely. Another thing is the wine, Antonio uses white, he says there is no need for extra colour, as the tomato concentrate provides lots of that. I used about 2 tsps of that and 400 g of passata. As for the wine, nearly half a bottle of very decent chardonnay went in. Antonio insists on using no herbs whatsoever, no oregano, no basil. I didn’t this time, but I had to flavour my sauce, so salt, pepper, sugar and a beef stock thingy from Knorr went in.

It cooked for nearly 2 hours. I served it with tagliatele, again, Antonio insisted this is the pasta to soak in all the flavours of the sauce. Finished with parmigiano. Enjoyed a lot.

Jamie Oliver’s, naturally.  I’ve been waiting for the episode with the recipes for steamed buns, that he puts on the table and says- imagine putting this on the table- boom! They looked wonderful. And I’ve always been a pig for Chinese food. Finally, last Thursday I caught that episode, took notes of all the recipes, ordered a bamboo steamer from Ocado and this evening made the whole thing.  Olutafied, as ever, I had to. Jamie boy makes those meals a bit too healthy  sometimes, so I decided against steaming my chicken, I fried it. 🙂

The buns. Super easy recipe. A 400 ml can of coconut milk and 2 of those cans of self raising flour. Pinch of salt. Kitchen aid.  The dough was very runny, messy and difficult to work with, but I was doing as I was told, as always on the unfamiliar territory.  They steamed in the wok for about 15 minutes using the muffin paper cups and they  looked exactly like on telly.  They tasted ok and were very, very filling, however I couldn’t, for the live of me taste any ducking coconut!!!Maybe coconut cream next time? Some toasted desiccated coconut? We both really liked them though and I’ll be looking at more recipes with steamed buns.  If I could make those super light dim sum things with hot pork inside, I’d be super happy.

The chicken was awesome. And will be done again this way. A quick marinade of hoisin sauce, a juice of half a lime, some salt, sesame seeds. A few chestnut mushrooms.  Quickly pan fried, finished with fresh chili and coriander- from the garden. Loved it! Fresh, exciting, oriental.

Also present were some steamed broccoli and pak choi, a bit overcooked, but eaten nevertheless. And a little cucumber salad that I won’t bother with any more, so average it was.

I’ll definitely be doing more buns, more steaming and more of that yummy chicken.

Majestic delivered today 24 bottles of Asahi, which they had on a nice offer, 24 bottles for £24. There had to be burgers to go with it. I had some from Ocado’s counter, the Aberdeen Angus ones, with them brioche buns buttered and toasted. Green salad, fresh shallot, plus some of the processed cheese that melts so nicely. And fries.

Yum.

The masterplan was to make ravioli, fill them with a selection of lovely, fresh mushrooms from Whole Foods and drizzle with truffle oil.  But having spent most of the day DYI’ing, like good christians that we are, we couldn’t be bothered with making pasta, so I made pizza dough instead. Chopped and fried the mushrooms and pan fried them with lots of pepper and salt. Less is more, when it comes to pizza, so all I put on it was tomato sauce, grated cheese, some cherry tomatoes, the said mushrooms and baked it. When ready, some fresh thyme from the garden added lovely aroma, parmesan shavings and that truffle oil sealed the deal. Sooooooo good! 🙂