Another Food Blog

I saw sardines at the Tesco fish counter. I’ve never bought sardines before in England and they seemed remarkably cheap. I bought 6-8 medium sized sardines for about 68p.

I took them home and cursed myself for not having asked the fishmonger to cut and scale the fish. Having gutted and scaled the fish I then de-boned them before cooking them. I tried to do this with a knife, as I had seen on TV and failed horribly, achieving two thin slivers of fillet and 90% wasted fish! I tried again, this time using just my fingers, the bones came away as I ran my thumb down the spine. The skeletons came away complete.

I then mixed some chili peppers with olive oil, salt and pepper and rubbed the fillets in the marinade, then fried.

The result was good but disappointing, the sardines had very little flavour and I assumed they must have been frozen or somehow drained of taste. I ate the sardines with couscous mixed with cherry tomatoes, red onion, ginger, seasonings and lemon juice. Very satisfying.

LaRioja Alta, Gran Reserva 904, 1997.

Gifted this delicious bottle we based our weekend around it. Having debated between lamb and duck for a day or two we settled on roast lamb in the supermarket when we weighed up what they had on offer.

A small roasting joint rubbed and stuffed with garlic, rosemary and thyme. Accompanied with butternut squash (oil, salt and pepper), roast parsnips and potatoes and an olive, cherry tomato and bean salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

The entire ensemble was delicious, as was the wine, as was the company.

The lamb was a succulent and delicious pink inside, so much so that I cut the joint from both ends, leaving the middle section which was ‘super-rare’ wrapped in tin-foil just to continue cooking slightly by itself (I didn’t return it to the oven). A Gran Reserva success.

Sticky Toffee pudding. The actual sponge cake here is ‘naturally’ dairy-free… well, once you swap the butter for dairy-free spread. The toffee sauce normally involves double cream, we used oat cream, which I haven’t found as a double cream, but only as a single cream. We used it and thickened the sauce with some flour (corn-flour would be best, we didn’t have any).

The resultant sauce tasted of oats! It tasted of liquid flapjacks. Delicious in itself but perhaps not ideal on a sticky toffee pudding. When it was poured over the cake though it wasn’t particularly noticeable – and it was delicious.

The sticky toffee pudding itself has dates in it which have been simmered in tea, the result it moist and tasty. The desert was eaten by a sticky toffee pudding connoisseur who does eat dairy and he declared it as good as any he’d ever had.

Orujo is a Spanish version of Grappa.
Grappa is made from the leftover grape matter from the wine making process and this one was made with the waste from Albariño.

It was a gift given to my mother, who described it as demanding and not moreish. It was a very complex drink, and tasted great. About an hour after drinking I did crave another, so it is moreish in the long run.

In the long run we’re all drunk.

Duck in a bowl is an Anthony Worrall Thompson recipe available in his book ‘Anthony Makes It Easy’.

Very simply, Score the skin and rub the duck in 5 spice,  fry it breast skin down for 10 minutes and then on the other side for 3. Done. Slice it and put it on top of the noodles.

Noodles: Chicken consome (you can spend a fortune on this stuff, but a stock cube in water is exactly the same), with sugar snaps and pak choi, we used baby ones which were really lovely, but the original recipe called for an adult one cut roughly up. Pop the ramen noodles in at the end and serve.

Simple dish made delicious by duck.