Salad for free

"Salad for free" says Mr Slater - this is dandelions but once again due to our atrocious weather I couldn't find any!!!!!!
So onwards, made this simple supper with rocket and watercress. Tonight's meal - A salad of spring lamb, lemon and olives. 
 The hot salad dressing slightly wilted the leaves but another delicious supper.

A note to anyone following my blog - I am continuing to work my way through the Kitchen Diaries but am going away on a short break until Weds 1 st May.  That means I will have to catch up on the following recipes: April 26 th - Crab and coriander cakes

April 27th - Spring chicken with young garlic leaves

April 29 th - Smoked haddock , mussel & leek chowder

April 30th - Beetroot fritters with gravalax

Looking forward to my holiday but will be back on my blog on Wednesday May 1st Please don't desert me.

A night in on my own.

A night in on my own so decided to half the quantities and try this on my own. Quick and easy to make, ideal after a busy tiring day.
Very , very rich- A version of Alfredo- this is the first time I have been unable to finish a Nigel Slater's meal. As much as I wanted to the richness defeated me!!!!

So hungry !!!!!!

April 22 nd Monday
At the beginning of this chapter Mr Slater talks about his salad spinner with great affection which is unusual because he is not a great fan of kitchen gadgets. He says " I know I would hate to be without mine."
Oh dear ! I threw mine away when I moved house - trying to de- clutter. Another addition to my ever growing shopping list!( Until then I best buy ready washed so I don't get soggy leaves!!!!)

I made today's recipe for lunch - Five spice chicken and pea shoot salad.
We were so hungry - having skipped breakfast - and this smelt and looked so delicious I forgot to photograph it before we ate !!!!!!
My husband said,  " I really, really like this " and when I said I had forgotten to photograph it he replied, " Great, do it again and take a photo!"

In the recipe Mr Slater says to grate the ginger to a pulp scraping every bit from the grater into a mixing bowl. Quite hard to do so a good tip here is to use an old pastry brush - works really well !

This really really is rabbit!!!!!!!!

April 20th and Rabbit with tarragon
Well I guess this really is rabbit. Bit squeamish about this one! I can remember my grandma making rabbit stew and being made to sit at the table ( for hours!!!!!) because I refused to eat it.
The chapter today is called "Eating Bunny" - which is exactly how I felt as a child. Mr Slater talks about "..........simmering bunny bits in stock with onions and fennel...." Oh dear !
Anyway determined to try every recipe onwards and upwards. Sourcing a rabbit involved a day out until we found a farm shop selling rabbit. It was wild rabbit and whole, fortunately the butcher there very kindly jointed it for me.
The sauce in this dish is very rich and I have to confess I quite enjoyed the rabbit. Husband complained there was not enough meat on the rabbit and it being a wild rabbit had, perhaps, been running around too much!!!!!!
Might try this recipe with chicken next time.

I served A salad of radishes and spring onions with the rabbit.

I hate radishes, my husband loves them, I love salad, my husband doesn't! So let's see what we make of this.

Well we made a lot of this salad - very refreshing and an excellent accompaniment to the rabbit with its very rich sauce. Certainly will make this one again. 

Lemon Curd

Wednesday April 17 th and two recipes to make today, Lemon Curd and A heavenly parfait of orange  and lemon.
I shall start with the lemon curd as this is needed in the second recipe.
Mr Slater makes cooking sound idyllic e.g. ".........the timeless bonhomie of a tray of warm oatcakes being taken from the oven..........the intoxicating, ..........almost hallucinogenic hit.........from grinding cardamom "
I guess I need to calm down more when cooking, not rush to prepare but take time and pleasure - and so I did when making my pot of lemon curd. A slight panic when I worried it wasn't thickening - but it did, it just needed a little more time. And yes Mr Slater you are right, a good sharp grater is essential and next on my list of " kitchen to buys "
Verdict on lemon curd - scrummy.

 And this evening on to A heavenly parfait of orange and lemon.
All I can say is HEAVENLY HEAVENLY HEAVENLY!!!!!!!!!

This desert was so delicious I was eating it out of the bowl before it even reached the freezer.

No wild garlic to be found!

Monday April 15 th and I am on the hunt for wild garlic . Try as I might I have been unable to find any, even visiting  locations where I have seen it growing in previous years. I must blame this awful weather again and the very slw start to Spring.
I had to compromise and add garlic to the butter in this recipe rather than wrap leaves of the wild garlic around the lamb. Disappointing but will try this recipe - Roast lamb with garlic leaf butter - again when I find some wild garlic!
I roasted some potatoes in soe of the juices left from cooking the lamb as they smelt and tasted wonderful.
Mr Slater does not say how many this serves - we were 2 - and although we finished it ( greedy guts) I would say it will serve 4 people easily.
Very, very rich

Rabbit!!!!!!!

Gosh , when reading this chapter heading "A nettle rabbit"  I thought I was going to be eating rabbit - but it turns out to be " rarebit" - cheese on toast, thank goodness and a huge sigh of relief . This cheese on toast was a little different with the addition of nettle tops. Felt very strange to be picking nettles to cook but Mr Slater says "........ Treat nettles like spinach "
Boy were they hard to find, due to the horrendous weather we are having at the moment they've hardly grown!
Sorry, forgot to photograph this one before we had devoured the lot, but can highly recommend this for a scrummy lunch.

Quiche

Yesterday - April 9th the recipe was A goats cheese and onion tart.
I decided to make this in advance and serve at my book club meeting. A great fan of any quiche I was eager to try this out and use friends as guinea pigs in the tasting. A resounding success I think with most of us having a second slice.

The book was good too!!!!!!

Eating too much!!!!!!

April 7 th  starts the chapter where Mr Slater says that he regards the juices left in the pan or roasting dish " .......as nothing less than treasure"
This brings back memories of childhood, when awaiting Sunday roast lunch Mum would dip a wedge of bread into the juices around the meat " to put us on until dinner was ready" Divine!!!!!
Or the next day with the remaining juices set hard (dripping) spread on bread with a sprinkling of salt. I guess we are too health conscious for that sort of treat today.!!!!!
So yesterday's recipe was Chorizo, cabbage and crayfish tails.
This was a delicious stir fry sort of dish using the juices from the chorizo.

This was followed by Hot cross bread and butter pudding

I was not looking forward to this. I hated bread and butter pudding as a child, part of school dinners, it's edges dry and curled with currants as hard as bullets!!! Not surprisingly Mr Slater's was nothing like this but rather a delicious concoction of egg yolks, double cream and hot cross buns amongst other ingreds. So lovely was this desert that we both ate far too much and couldn't move for the rest of the evening!

Boudin Noir

Yesterday saw us tucking in to a very unusual sausage roll!
I adore black pudding in all its various sizes and shapes and textures. My favourite starter at one of our favourite restaurants - La Grillade - is " boudin noir served with apple", it's delicious.
Yesterday's recipe was Black pudding in pastry with mustard sauce"
A simple description would be a black pudding sausage roll - divine!!!!!
The mustard sauce could be good with other pastries too.

A difference of opinion.

Today's recipe was Savoury Apple Crumble ( actually it should be cooked tomorrow but we are going out)
Mr Slater says " .......controversial twist on a classic recipe...."  So it is actually a crumble to be served with meat - pork.
I think my favourite pudding has to be apple crumble with piping hot custard. So how would I like a savoury version to be eaten with a pork roast or sausages?
Well I loved it , we had it with some lovely Cumberland sausages from our local farm shop but I can imagine how well it would go with a roast joint of pork as an alternative to apple sauce and seasoning.
My husband however was not happy, he said it was like eating a pudding with main course and it was too dry so could I make some gravy !!!!!!!!!!! I suggested he made his own !

Which he did !

After a short break!

After a short break in the Kitchen Diaries we start a new Chapter in April. The first recipe for April is today's Chicken, olives and lemon.
As it is Easter we are away on a short break in our caravan, but not to be put off I took all the ingreds with me and cooked on site.
At the start of this chapter Mr Slater talks about olives. He says ".....the less someone has done to an olive, generally the more I appreciate it ........"
I rather like the olives stuffed with sundried tomatoes but otherwise have to agree. If I want anchovies, chillies or almonds I prefer not to have them stuffed in an olive!!!!!
In today's recipe olives are combined with garlic, lemon and chicken. All cooked in the one pot it was  ideal to cook in a small space and to make it even easier I served it with crusty bread to mop up the divine sauce. One drawback , the ground turmeric seems to have turned my finger nails yellow. Hope it wears off quickly!!!!!

Today's second recipe, I have to confess to making before we went away and taking them with us for a treat.  Dark chocolate discs with rosé petals.

I couldn't get any crystallised rose petals anywhere, most delis I visited had never heard of them so I had to miss these out. Further on in the book though ( June 21st) I notice there is a recipe for making your own - so come summer that is what I shall do and then have a good excuse for making these delicious treats again.

The recipe didn't say how many this made so I had to guess the size of disc to make and I managed ten. The combination of chocolate, nuts, candied peel and salt not only looked divine but tasted heavenly.