It’s a miracle!

Yes, Goon is cooking! I think it has been at least 6 months since he last tried cooking properly and, even then, I had to take over.

The reason for this suprising occurence is a rather nasty bug that hit me on Tuesday. It really was horrible. I ended up spending most of the day on the sofa in pain. By the evening I was in pain and hungry. Goon’s first suggestion was take-away but there was no way I wanted junk food then.

Goon wasn’t too keen on the idea of cooking. He likes to have precise, failsafe instructions for preparing food and not many of my cookbooks are very good for that. They are mostly a collection of Borders £3 bargains (great for inspiration rather than reliable recipes) and  more difficult material that I like to use to challenge myself.  

The only option was for me to invent something for him to cook. In the end I adapted some instructions for a UKTV lobster dish to make an easy recipe ofr linguine with tomato based seafood sauce.

He followed it pretty well! If he hadn’t kept getting distracted by the TV, he might have managed it all himself, but I had to run in, stir and add liquid a few times to save it when the crummy cop show on telly got too exciting for Goon.

Simple Linguine with a Crab and Prawn Sauce

Ingredients (for one Goon and one ill and hungry person)

• 1 tin (approx 175g drained) crabmeat
• 200g shelled, cooked king prawns 
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 or 3 green birds eye chillies, roughly chopped
•  a thumb sized piece of ginger root, crushed
• 1 small glass white wine
• 1 Goon sized handful (it’s a BIG hand) of coriander leaf, roughly chopped
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes in their own juice
• Olive oil (quite a lot)
• Salt and Pepper
• 225g dried linguine
• more coriander to garniish

Put the pasta to boil in plenty of salted water. 

Fry the garlic gently in about 1 tbsp of  olive oil. When it is soft add the crushed ginger, the chopped green chillies, the tomatoes and the white wine. Let these simmer for a while. 

If a Goon is cooking this, make sure you turn the TV off at this point, or disaster may follow.

Once the pasta has cooked, toss it in just enough olive oil to coat it and set it aside.

When the tomato sauce is thick, stir in a large handful of chopped coriander. Taste and add salt, pepper and more coriander and tomato puree if necessary. (I had to do this bit- Goon doesn’t trust his tastebuds.) 

Stir in the white crabmeat and the king prawns. Mix it up thoroughly with the linguine, warm it through, and serve, garnished with more coriander.

 ***

And the result?

It tasted very good indeed! 

The best thing about this, is that it has encouraged Goon to cook some more. This could be really useful because I’ll probably need a few nights out of the kitchen when my job starts. My plan is to try and make Goon cook something simple once a week. I’ve already found that some of the recipes in my Nigel Slater books might be suitable for him. If those work out well, I might even go and pick up Delia’s cookery course and see what he makes of it.

Haggis is a funny thing. Providing you lie (or at least avoid saying anything) about what it contains, you’ll find that almost everyone who tries it absolutely loves it. However, mention the list of ingredients, and you’ll find most people run away from it, screaming.

I’ve always loved the stuff and, since I started buying it from Borough Market, I’m enjoying it even more. Goon is a recent convert too, so I frequently pick one up on my Friday shopping trips. The only problem is that my eyes have always been bigger than my stomach and I’ll inevitably buy a haggis that is far too large.

This happened to me last week. I picked up a big haggis which we had that evening in the traditional style with creamed potatoes and swede (I couldn’t find any turnips.)

That left about a third of a haggis to use up. It could have been enough for just one for dinner but, since Goon is now a permanent resident of my flat, it made much more sense to combine it with something else to create a meal for two. I thought of haggis stuffed chicken breasts but there was one problem with that. Chicken breasts are usually sold skinned and the skin is my favourite bit.

Luckily I found that Whole Foods in Kensington is one of the few places around that sell supremes of chicken.  When I was at school, I always thought that a chicken supreme was a dish of chicken gristle coated in a dodgy ‘white wine and mushroom sauce’ that was more like milk thickened with cornflour. I didn’t find out it was also a cut (the breast plus the wing with skin attached) until  I started visiting farmers markets and came across supremes of guinea fowl. I haven’t seen this cut of chicken anywhere except in Whole Foods, which is a real shame.

My supremes came from nice plump corn fed birds and were a good thickness for stuffing. I cut a pocket in each breast and stuffed it with my haggis (and a little black pudding because I like it). Then came the fun bit.

I wanted to wrap my supremes in bacon so that the meat would encase its stuffing tightly. But how could I do this without  covering the skin?  I decided to use my trick for stuffing the skins of whole birds.

The skin on the supreme could in theory easily be removed by just cutting it off with a sharp knife. Instead, I used my knife to loosen the middle portion of the skin whilst leaving the left and right sections attached to the meat. Then I slipped my finger under the skin to lift the middle bit of the skin away from the meat, then pushed the bacon between the loose skin and the meat. After that, I could carefully wrap the bacon around the supreme so it covered the opening to the stuffing. 

The dark bit on the right hand side is the now very crispy chicken skin, still on the supreme, with the bacon wrapping beneath it. I suppose I could have roasted the skin seperately, but that wouldn’t have been so much fun, would it? The liquid over and around the supreme is a whisy cream sauce (just single cream and whisky reduced with a touch of worcestershire sauce) . There are also some steamed green beans and a porcini mushroom risotto.

And just in case you didn’t believe me about the haggis and black pudding stuffing, here it is inside the chicken breast.

This meal was rather too much food for two people so we had leftovers from our leftovers meal. :/  But I enjoyed the meat in a sandwich the next day and the risotto will probably be made into arancini. That is, if it lasts that long!

Of all the commonly eaten food creatures, shellfish and cephalopods seem to be treated with the greatest trepidation. I suppose that, in today’s world of sanitised chicken breasts in plastic wrappers, the sight of eyes, tails, legs and tentacles is a harsh reminder that you’re actually eating something that was a living and breathing creature.

Then there is the fact that, when it comes down to it, these creatures do look rather bizarre. In fact they look so alien that the horror writer HP Lovecraft seems to have based his designs for ancient evil Gods on them.

Picture from www.paleos.com

Doesn’t the evil God Cthulu look like an overgrown squid on legs? I’m glad that is all fiction, or I’d be in a lot of trouble with all the tentacles i’ve eaten in my time.  

While I can partially understand a slight hesitation in wanting to try these rather odd looking creatures, cephalopods can make some really tasty meals. Here is one of them.

This is octopus, dressed with a spicy oil and coriander served with coconut and lime rice and some curried green beans. Personally I think that, in this form, the octopus looks rather appetizing. But it didn’t start off looking like this.

If you’re of a squeamish disposition, you’d better quit reading this post here. The more adventurous among you may prefer to click on the ‘more’ button to see my octopus on the way to becoming this tasty meal. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!

(more…)

The problem I’ve found with being a foodie is that, the more you cook, the more sensitive you become about your cooking and the more particular you become about what you eat. At least this is true of me. I’ve discovered that there’s a part of me that can be quite a ridiculous snob. My ‘inner chef,’ as it were, seems to have developed the temperament of a certain sitcom character from the early 90s. *  

Last Saturday, flatmate Mike and his girlfriend, Christina, arrived at home while Goon and I were tucking into our dinner.

“What’s that you’re having?” he asked, “Steak and chips?”**

A perfectly reasonable question given what he saw, I’m sure you’ll agree. But for some reason the small voice of my inner chef in the back of my mind greatly objected to this description of our food.

“Steak and chips! STEAK AND CHIPS?! This is a venison fillet au poivre with a damson wine reduction and HOME MADE maris piper chips!” it screamed silently at me.

Fortunately my conscious mind recognised how utterly daft this statement was and  managed to keep my inner chef under control. Not many people have encountered this side of me. This is probably for the best. It’s outbursts have been reserved for Goon, (when he gets the shopping list wrong), my parents (whenever I go into their kitchen) and the manager of a particularly rubbish and expensive gastropub.

If my inner chef starts escaping on a regular basis, I might need to seek psychiatric help.

The venison fillet au poivre came about after I learnt about the origins of Steak Diane. Apparently the dish was originally made with venison and was named after the Greek goddess of hunting. I’d only ever seen the dish made with beef so I wondered if I could adapt the modern recipe to suit the rich flavours of deer. 

But, when I got home, I remembered that I’d finished the last of our cognac (the key ingredient in the Steak Diane sauce) on the day we moved flats***, so I needed a new plan.  I had a flash of inspiration and decided to make a reduction of the damson wine I had bought the previous morning on my trip to Borough Market. When the wine reduced, it turned out to be sweeter and more fruity than most red wine reductions but not quite as rich and syrupy as port. It was a perfect balance for the venison! The only problem was I needed to reduce about half a bottle to get enough sauce for the steaks. 

Apart from the chips, this meal was very easy to make. First I took about a tablespoon of back peppercorns and cracked them using a pestle and mortar. Then I crushed a clove of garlic and mix it with about two tablespoons of olive oil. I used the oil to coat the steaks and pressed the cracked peppercorns into the steak so the steak was lightly coated with the peppercorns.  The steaks were left covered for about an hour.

In the mean time I made the chips. I think maris piper potatoes are great for this. They have the best texture.  

I peeled six medium sized maris piper potatoes (which made a few too many chips, but we still ate them) and cut them into inch thick chips. I brought a pot of salted water to the boil and placed the chips in it. Once the water came back to the boil, I let it bubble for five minutes then drained the chips well. Since I don’t have a deep fat fryer, I had to cook my chips on the hob. I got a saucepan of sunflower oil hot then deep fried the chips until they were golden brown in batches of 8 at a time. It only took a minute or two for each batch to cook.  

As each batch finished cooking, I drained them on kitchen towel. Then, when they were all done, I seasoned them with salt, pepper and garlic granules.

Of course, we had our venison rare. The steaks went into a hot frying pan for just over a minute per side (basically just long enough for the outside to be properly cooked) and then were wrapped in foil and left to stand for about 8 minutes. As the steaks were standing, I literally just let half a bottle of the damson wine bubble until it was concentrated and slightly syrupy. I did’t feel the need to use any herbs with it, the flavour of the reduced wine was perfect on its own. 

It would have been totally successful if Goon hadn’t objected to the steak being peppered. Personally, I liked the combination of pungent peppercorns, rich meat and sweet wine sauce. The flavours were fantastic together.

We had our steak and chips venison fillet au poivre and home made maris piper chips with a rocket salad, coated in a simple dressing made from olive oil, rasperry vinegar and a touch of balsamic. I’d say it was a notch above your average steak and chips, but probably not enough to merit the daft fancy name my inner chef gave it!

* Or perhaps a certain currently successful real celebrity chef. 

** Please note that when you imagine Mike talking, it must be with a very strong Coventry accent. It’s not the same otherwise. 

*** Well, it have been a nuisance to carry it all the way to my flat, right?

That Whole Foods supermarket is going to bankrupt me. I keep finding cool things like these that I want to try.

Picture borrowed from nandalaya.com, until I remember to photograph my own eggplants.

The market actually has a good selection of eggplants, from the normal aubergines we see all the time here to little yellow, white and blue ones. These tiny green ones caught my eye because I remember eating them in a green curry I had in Thailand. I was ill that evening with a horrible heat migraine and had stayed behind in my hotel room. Dinner was from room service and, after I’d finished, I tried asking the porter what the little, sour vegetables in the curry were. I’d assumed they were peas but the flavour was different and they had a harder texture.

Unsuprisingly, the porter was clueless and it wasn’t until I was visiting Saran Rom several years later that I encountered the little vegetables again. The staff here were much more well informed about the ingredients in the green curry and the maitre’ d even brought out a raw one for me to see. Apparently these eggplants are considered to be good in a green curry because of their slightly crunchy texture.

When I came across the plants in Whole Foods I made a mental note to make my own green curry with them. Then, on Thursday, I was planning to make a red curry with a twist but the key ingredient was unavailable. I thought it was a good time to make a green chicken curry instead with the exciting eggplants.

The curry was more difficult to make than it should have been. While i was getting my spices together, flatmate Ken came to ask me how to make a green curry from scratch. I started to tell him, and then realised that I wasn’t making a green curry at all. For some reason I’d gone on autopilot and was making a red one. I clearly need more sleep.*

So, I told Ken roughly how to make both a red and green curry paste and proceeded to make my red curry. Then I ran into problem 2. Somehow, during our move, we lost both our pestle and mortar pairs (i.e. Goon forgot to pack them). Fortunately Ken came to my assistance and did a pretty good job of pounding the spices in a bowl with a rolling pin.

Once the spices were roughly ground, I made my red curry paste and then the red curry in the way I normally do, except this time I threw in my eggplants roughly ten minutes before I was ready to serve.  

Those eggplants really look like large peas, don’t they.Fortunately they were just as good in a red curry as they are in a green one. We had our curry with jasmine rice and, on Schmoof’s recommendation, I tried stir frying some choi sum with garlic, ginger, chilli and oyster sauce. I threw some mushrooms in for good measure too. 

I’ve decided to enter Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging this week with this post, so I’ve done a little bit of research on these eggplants**.  Apparently eggplants are native to India Sri Lanka but are cultivated all over the place now. The wild plants produce small vegetables, like the ones I had in my curry. They were only half a centimetre in diameter. Cultivated plants tend to produce much bigger vegetables, like the purple ones we are used to seeing in our supermarkets.

The name ‘eggplant’ comes from the first growers of these plants in Europe and North America. The aubergines there looked a lot like Goose or Duck eggs since they were white and round.  

This week, Weekend Herb Blogging is being hosted by Chris from Mele Cotte. Head over there on Monday to see the other exciting submissions for this week’s WHB.

*Or less alcohol. I’ve had a fair few bottles of champagne since I found out about my new job.

**Ok, you got me, I just looked them up on wikipedia.

I avoid writing posts that aren’t about food, but these last two weeks have created a rather interesting turning point in my life that I’d like to share with you, my fellow bloggers and foodie readers.

I’m not a superstitious person in any sense, but over the last two weeks it really has felt like the hand of fate has been working in my life. It all started when I handed in my last thesis draft. My supervisor apparently was off on a conference so it would be a while before he read it. Since it is the summer holidays I don’t have any students either, so I had a bit of time to put my feet up.

As I sat at my desk wondering what the hell to do with myself, an e-mail arrived in my inbox advertising positions to teach A-levels at various independent schools in and around London. From the tone of the e-mail, it sounded like they were after part-timers for sixth-form  and crammer colleges. Goon and I both agreed this sounded like the perfect way for me to keep myself in cash while I figured out what to do with my life. After all, I really like teaching and my current income from private tutoring is pretty unreliable.

So off went my C.V. and, a week later, I got a phone call saying that a school wanted to interview me. The HR lady on the other end of the line sounded quite excited about it. Apparently this was one of the best schools in London.

However,when I went into the agency the day before my interview, I was not amused at all. I had the following, very irritating conversation with the HR agent that had been in contact with the school.

ME:What do you mean, ‘I’ll be teaching year 7s’?! That e-mail you sent out was talking about A-Level!”

(For those of you who are unfamiliar with the British schooling system, year 7 is the first year of secondary school. The pupils are 11 years old and usually taught in groups of 20-30, whereas the e-mail had specified small classes of 16- 18 year olds.)

HR: Relax! But whatever you do, don’t let the school think you’re just applying to teach A-levels!
ME:But I WAS just applying to teach A-levels!
HR:You need to make them think you like teaching the younger children.
ME: I DO like teaching younger children but you can’t send me into an interview tomorrow when you’ve only just told me what the job is!
HR: Don’t worry. They’ll just get you to teach a class of year 7s for an hour or so tomorrow.
ME: WHAT!!? 
HR: It’ll be fun!

I really wanted to punch her at this point.

ME: I can’t just go in and spontaneously teach a class of 20 young children. I need time to think!! The job advertised on the e-mail is nothing like this!

Throughout  this conversation, Ms HR kept smiling cheerfully at me in the way only very persuasive HR types can. I was holding my head in my hands and scowling.

HR: You know, if you go in there looking all grumpy like that, you’ll never get the job!

I resisted the urge to bang my head against the desk. After a pep-talk that lasted an hour, I realised that there was no way I was getting out of this one.

So on a rainy Friday morning, I turned up at the school, rather fed up and pretty sure I didn’t even want to be applying for this job. I couldn’t have anticipated how things would change over that day.

Meeting the other members of the maths department, and in particular the very charming head of department, was almost enough to change my mind on its own. I’d never have expected to find a bunch of such talented and keen mathematicians teaching in a school. These are people with whom I could actually discuss advanced topics in my subject.

They weren’t mean enough to throw me in on my own with a class of year 7s,  but I did get to assist in one class. The kids were a nice, well disciplined bunch who were friendly and polite.

On the Monday I was invited back and this time I did teach a class after having the weekend to prepare. It was great! These kids were around 12 years old but were more enthusiastic and asked more intelligent questions than any undergraduate I’ve ever taught. I found myself wondering why I was considering teaching at higher level, when I was getting such a great response from these children.

The only downside* of the two day visit was the continous stream of phone calls from my HR ‘friend’ with more encouraging pep-talks. I’ll never understand how anyone can spend so much time saying so little. In fact she spent so much time on the phone to me, she singlehandedly drained my phone battery over the course of one afternoon.

Anyway, this week I was delighted to hear that the great school I visited has offered me the job and, although this has been so unexpected, I’ve decided to take it. So, as of September, I will no longer be a student but a full time maths teacher at Highgate School, one of the best schools in North London.  I am very excited and a little overwhelmed but luckily I have two months now to get used to the idea.

I have no idea how this will affect my blog. I guess there’ll be plenty to read during the holidays and just a few posts per week during term time. Then again, the school’s Head Master seemed to suggest I might do some extra-curricular cooking things with the students, so perhaps that will feature. We’ll find out in 8 weeks or so.

And, now that I’ve finished my excited rambling, we can get back to the more important topic of food. Tomorrow, I will take my promise of future earnings and go mad at Borough Market. In the meantime, below is a post about some monkfish I cooked on Sunday. Enjoy!

*Well, there was one other downside. School dinners still suck, even at a posh school like this one.

Have I mentioned before that I hate Sundays?

Since I’ve had so much time on my hands in the last week, I have had lots of opportunity to think about exactly what I want for dinner. I can create and recreate dishes in my head to my hearts content and, very occasionally, I get a good idea.

On Sunday I had some of this inspiration. I knew they had some good looking monkfish tails at Whole Foods so I thought of marinating one in lemon and pernod, crusting it with lemon thyme and roasting it with fennel.

So far so good, but since it was a Sunday I had to sprint to the market before it shut. I got there just in time, selected my monkfish and gleefully carried it over to vegetable section to find, to my horror, that there was no fennel.

I couldn’t believe it! Whole Foods had let me down! But I don’t give up that easily. Even on a Sunday at 6pm, surely somewhere would have fennel. So I started walking. I checked out the little shops on Gloucester road, then I walked to the little Iranian shops on Hammersmith Road, then I walked to the Sainsbury Local in Shepherds Bush. No fennel anywhere. My last port of call was the big Islamic shops on the Uxbridge road. They have EVERYTHING and they never seem to shut.

Well, everything except fennel. By this point it was 7:30pm and I’d walked about 6 miles. I decided this whole thing was ridiculous, gave up, bought some asparagus and headed home. Then Goon said he didn’t like asparagus any more.

We both had our monkfish as planned, with saffron flavoured roast potatoes.

The monkfish was marinated in a mixture of lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic and pernod. Just before putting it in the oven, I stripped the leaves off some lemon thyme and lightly coated the tail with it, then roasted it on a bed of sliced lemon and star anise. The marinade certainly gave the fish a good flavour. The lemon dominated but there was still a subtle presence of the aniseed, which was exactly how I wanted it.

As an accompaniment, I had roast asparagus and Goon had buttered broad beans.  I made a quick white wine reduction with a splash of cream as a last minute sauce.

I think this is the second time I’ve made saffron roast potatoes. They’re really growing on me. Whilst I still prefer goose-fat flavoured roast potatoes, they don’t suit every meal and this saffron version is a nice, interesting variant. 

One day I might actually learn my lesson and shop for my Sunday dinner on Saturday when all the decent shops are open. Or, more likely, I will continue to swear and curse at the Sunday trading laws for ever, or at least until I get out of Britain.

As you might have gathered from my posts this year, I haven’t done any cooking at my place for literally months. There are several reasons for this. For a start, Goon’s flat was literally three minutes from conveniences such as a tube station, a decent supermarket (well, decent in the sense it wasn’t one of those dodgy 24-hour corner stores) and was on a busy road so getting back home late at night didn’t cause any safety issues.

Then there is the fact that, although my flatmates are very nice people (in contrast to the nutters Goon ended up with), the flat itself left a bit to be desired. The plumbing is dodgy, it’s impossible to turn the shower on without a wrench and the storage space situation is ludicrous.

For example, this is our fridge, BEFORE I attempted to put my groceries in there.

That’s supposed to hold enough for the occupants of two double rooms and one single room. Potentially five people could live here permanently. In practice sometimes there could be six staying in the flat at one time. Help!

And, while the kitchen looks pretty there are more storage issues. You’d think from that photo that there was a good deal of space. But the cupboard under the sink is a dummy, the one to its left has the washing machine in it and the one on the far left houses the fridge. There’s not a lot of room for crockery and glasses.

And finally, I thought I’d mastered electric ovens but now I need to master an electric oven with no legible temperature markings.

The last of these little problems caused me a bit of trouble when Goon asked for a roast chicken for dinner on our first night in the flat. I got myself down to the amazing Whole Foods market in Kensington, picked up a lovely free-range, corn-fed bird, whose skin I stuffed with sprigs of tarragon. I also smeared some mustard under and over the skin and stuffed the cavity of the bird with onion and smoked garlic. When I came to put the bird in the oven, I had no idea where to set the dial so I thought I’d pop it in at the highest temperature for ten minutes to crisp up the skin then go for the number that looked like 160 C and hoped for the best.

I noticed that this oven got way hotter than I expected. After just a few minutes the skin of the bird had obviously crisped up a lot, so I turned down the heat early. I set it to what I thought was 150C but the bird still cooked in under an hour!

The next day, flatmate Ken gave me an explanation for what happened. The unreadable markings on the oven apparently went all the way up to 250 C. That’s a good 30C hotter than I wanted for crisping my skin. Also, when I turned down the heat it got left at 180C, not 150C. No wonder it cooked so bloody quickly!

Fortunately, I checked the oven just in time so we got a chicken, which was not quite as juicy as I’d have liked, but hadn’t yet reached the stage of being overcooked. The skin was nice and crispy though and the mustard gave it a good flavour and suprisingly dark colour. But, five minutes longer, and we would have had one dry and possibly inedible bird!

And then came the final problem of the evening. While my two flatmates appear to be better cooks than any of Goon’s ex-cohabitants, our kitchen is mysteriously lacking in decent knives. This was the only one that we could attempt carving the chicken with.

It’s a good knife, but rather old and in need of sharpening. Plus it’s not really big enough to carve a chicken. Goon did his best but we ended up with a rather messy chicken, hacked straight down the middle.

Hopefully things will get easier as I learn the use this oven of doom. In fact, I imagine I will learn to use it properly just in time for me to move out of this flat in September. Ah, the joys of student life. Thank God it’s nearly over.

This post has been waiting to be published for a few weeks now. I was delaying it because I  wanted to get pictures. Then I found out the store I’m going to tell you about wouldn’t let me take photos. Why some people turn down free advertising, I’ll never know!

On a Monday evening, a disgruntled Goon was in Tesco dealing with the customer services team. He was trying to get them to tell him what had happened to our £70 shipment of wine. They were having a hard time explaining how it managed to get lost between the warehouse and his flat, which was roughly 800m away.

Goon wasn’t expecting the phone call he was about to receive. He answered and from the other end of the line came….

“OHMYGODYOUARENOTGOINGTOBELIEVETHISPLACEIT’SUNBELIEVABLETHESTUFFHEREISINCEDIBLE IT’S THE BEST SHOP IN THE WORLD!!!!!!”

that was my reaction after spending five minutes in the new Whole Foods superstore on High Street Kensington. It really is that amazing. I have never even seen some of the stuff they have on sale here before.

Where do I begin?

BLUE MUSHROOMS!

A CHEESE SECTION THAT’S BIGGER THAN MY FLAT!

An UNBELIEVABLY EXCITING FISH STALL WITH RAZOR CLAMS, CRABS AND GORGEOUS LOOKING TUNA!

WILD RABBIT FOR £2.99!

RANDOM VEGETABLES I HAVE NEVER HAD! (What the hell is sapodilla anyway?)

BANANA LEAVES! NOW I CAN MAKE PUERCO PIBIL!

My planned quick investigatory glimpse into the shop turned into forty minutes of jaw-dropped amazement. This place is a foodie’s wet dream and it’s so big I actually got lost in it. I was so totally overwhelmed that in the end I only left with two items, some bulgar wheat and a french brie-like blue cheese, which was damned tasty. I went back the next day once my pulse had returned to a normal level. Then I did the same the next day. And the next….

The only thing missing from this shop is a decent selection of game meats, but then, it isn’t the season for many things.

And the staff here are actually competent and friendly! What’s that about? Most assistants on supermarket counters don’t have a clue about what they’re selling but the cheese guy at Whole Foods actually Knew enough to be able to make recommendations!

I walked home very happy, thinking that between the great butcher round the corner, the equally good fishmonger, the Whole Foods market and Waitrose, I was never going to want for anything again.

Then I got home and remembered that there was three things I definitely want for. A gag to shut up Goon’s blonde flatmate*, a key to lock her in her room* and some motivation to finish my thesis. But other than that, I was left with a feeling of fulfillment.

Here is the Whole Foods website. Go visit the shop! It’s great!

*Obviously these no longer apply since we’ve moved out of Goon’s flat, but at the time I REALLY wanted that gag. 

Remember the large lamb leg that Goon had fun butchering? Goon had to move out of his flat this weekend and the remaining four portions of lamb leg, which had been sitting in the freezer, had to be used up.

I decided to act on Schmoof’s recommendation and turn two portions of the meat into some harissa marinated lamb kebabs. That left the final batch of lamb to be used on the night before we left. The weather recently has been more reminiscent of late autumn than midsummer and, as always, my appetite was determined by this. I wanted a stew, but something a little more exciting than a straightforward red wine, carrot and celery combination.

Flicking through random internet pages, I came across one idea which looked particularly interesting: a lamb stew with lemon and dill. I have to admit, this is not a combination I would have thought of myself but I was intrigued and, since there was just enough time to enter this month’s ‘In the Bag’ event, I thought I could somehow incorporate the other ingredients for the event into the meal. Broad beans would work well with the lemon and dill in the stew and some Jersey Royal potatoes crushed with olive oil and herbs would be lovely mixed up with the juices.

The stew would have been easy to make too, had it not been for the intervention of Goon’s wonderful flatmates. This time they had managed to cause trouble without even being there. As I started to prepare my ingredients I noticed there was something different about the kitchen. 

ME: Goon! Where has all the kitchen equipment gone?
GOON: Uh?
ME: We used to have two cheese graters. Where are they?
GOON: (Thoughtful Silence)
ME: And the chopping boards… and the garlic crusher….and half the pans… 
GOON: Uh-oh. 
ME: (suspiciously) What?
GOON: The girlies moved out today.
ME: What? They took all the useful kitchen equipment with them?
GOON: Must have done.
ME: BUT WE BOUGHT HALF THAT STUFF!
Goon: Yes, and most of the rest of it came with the flat.

I can’t repeat what I said next as I’d like to keep this site family friendly. I’ll let you use your imagination. 

So it seems that one or both of the girlies have taken their money saving endevours further than I expected and claimed half the kitchen equipment as their own leaving us and the other boy in the flat without half the stuff we needed. I have to say, I’m rather glad I’ll never have to deal with either of them again, although I will miss torturing the blonde one with my offal based dinners.

Fortunately, Goon’s ability to perform mindless boring tasks for long periods of time meant that we could produce finely chopped lemon zest, which could almost pass for the grated zest I wanted for this meal. Chopping vegetables on a dinner plate was a real nuisance though. Despite the setbacks, we eventually produced a decent stew.

To start with I finely diced an onion and minced two cloves of garlic. I then let them soften on a low heat in a little olive oil with half a bunch of finely chopped dill. When the onion had softened, I  browned my chunks of lamb leg steak, added them to the pan covered them with lamb stock and a glug of white wine. I brought the mixture to a gentle simmer, threw in half a tablespoon of the finely chopped lemon zest and let it stew gently for two hours. After this time the lamb was tender, so I added two handfuls of young broad beans and turned the heat up to a steady simmer. After about 10 minutes, the beans were cooked and the stew was a good consistency so I tasted, added more chopped dill, lemon zest and black pepper and, just before serving, squeezed in the juice of half a lemon.

Although it isn’t the most photogenic thing, this meal was very good. I wish I had come across the idea before. The light fresh  flavours of the lemon and dill were a good balance for the richness of the lamb. The crushed jersey royals were a great accompaniment. I loved mixing the gravy in with the potatoes, they were delicious together. However, I think the stew would be even better with some more mature meat. Not mutton necessarily, but autumn lamb or perhaps hogget. The stew was good, but a little extra richness in the meat would make it perfect.

So here is my slightly late entry to ‘In the Bag,’ a fairly new event run by Scott at Real Epicurean, Julia at A Slice of Cherry Pie and Cherry at Cherry’s English Kitchen. This time Cherry is hosting - I hope she doesn’t mind that this is a day late!  The idea is that the host gives you three seasonal items that you need to incorporate in the meal. The items for June were lamb, broad beans and new season potatoes. Take a look at Cherry’s blog in a few days when the round up is posted and you’ll no doubt find lots of great recipes using these three ingredients.