One of the things I love most about tuna is it’s versatility.  

I wouldn’t normally have tuna twice in one week but I had to make an exception. For the whole of last week, Goon was asking for tuna steaks for dinner. I kept ignoring him because the weather was unseasonably cold and, as a result, I was craving heavier more comforting food. Then, as soon as Goon went away for the weekend, the sun came out, it got very warm and tuna steaks seemed like an excellent idea.

Browsing around Sainsbury’s, I came across a vegetable I hadn’t tried before. It was a chinese cabbage called choi sum. I’m sick to death of being stuck with pak choi whenever I’m making chinese, so I was very keen to try this new leaf. I decided to make an udon noodle soup with the choi sum, some oriental mushrooms (which I managed to get for free since the tills weren’t working properly \o/) and top it with a seared tuna steak.

This is a dish which I would have blogged before but, for some reason, it is always very difficult to photograph. This has been my best effort so far.

This dish always involves a lot of improvisation. I boil vegetable (or chicken) stock with chopped coriander, spring onion and red chilli, minced garlic and ginger, lemongrass, lime leaves and thai fish sauce in varying amounts depending on my mood. On this occasion I wanted something quite fiery, so a lot of chilli and ginger went in.

The tuna is just marinated in chilli, garlic and ginger and griddled until rare. To assemble the dish, pop the cooked vegetables and noodles in the bowl, pour over the soup and sit the tuna steak on top.  It’s best to wait until the soup is at room temperature. Otherwise it’ll cook your tuna steak more than you intended. 

When Goon found out about my dinner he wasn’t very happy. He sulked. A lot. To appease him i agreed to make tuna again when he came back at the end of the weekend, but I really didn’t fancy exactly the same thing again.

Fortunately, the versatility of tuna meant there were lots of other things I could make. This time I thought I’d do something completely different to my last tuna meal. Instead of a hot and spicy oriental dish, I went for more gentle flavours of saffron, lemon, herbs and garlic.

The marinade this time was a mixture of finely chopped basil and parsley with crushed garlic, lemon zest and lemon juice. The  black thing is a tapenade, made from black olives blitzed with soaked capers, more garlic (this is not a first date meal) and chilli infused olive oil. I like my tapenade quite chunky, so I kept the blitzing brief.

That was enough to keep Goon happy. I was suprised by the fact I preferred the second meal to the first. Usually I’m a real sucker for tuna in an oriental style, but the lemon and herb marinade beat the ginger and coriander hands down.  It had also been a long time since I’d had my own home made tapenade, so having that again made the meal even better.

Now, if only I could afford sushi grade fish, I could make some more exciting things with tuna.

Exam season has ended and thesis draft 3 is currently being decimated by my supervisor so, for a rather lovely change this weekend, I had a day off! I think the last time this happened must have been August 2006 (yes, I even taught over Christmas and Easter). Unfortunately, my first days off clashed with one of Goon’s working weekends. This time he was attending Yahoo’s first European Hack Day.

No, I don’t see the appeal either. The good news was that I got a chance to visit my parents properly for a change and spend some time poking around our family home. I’m quite wary of doing this since our house tends to be a bit of a breeding ground for spiders. I’ve never understood the affinity they had for the dark spot under the stairs.

I did find some interesting things. A book of my old poetry for a start, a load of old music  I used to play and some stolen recipe books too. As you might expect, I also raided the cupboards. My parents frequently shop at Sri-Lankan grocery stores so there’s a rather interesting selection of tinned fruit and vegetables. This time, I took some jackfruit because Goon hadn’t tried it before. I also got my hands on what is possibly the best thing about Sri-Lankan cuisine.

These are string hoppers. A Sri-Lankan staple made from  rice flour dough. The dough is made from just rice flour, water and seasonings  but apparently you need to sift the flour several times and get the mixture just right or the hoppers fall apart or turn sticky.

Once you have your dough, a special hand press with tiny holes is used to press the dough into fine noodles. The raw noodles are allowed to fall onto a holder so they form little round, thin ‘cakes.’  These are then steamed until they are cooked and then eaten with  curries and coconut sambal. As with most carbs, they don’t have a very strong flavour of their own, but they have a marvellous texture. Not chewy, but soft and slightly springy. 

I have been forbidden from trying to make these myself. Apparently it is far too difficult and my parents have hidden the equipment from me . These hoppers were bought from a caterer’s shop and are particularly good. I took home enough to feed me and Goon with plenty left over.

When I got back to my flat I made some curries to accompany our hoppers. Firstly, a beef curry with coconut milk and Sri Lankan spicing. It’s not at all traditional to use beef since Sri Lankan Buddhists have some Hindu influences on their culture. Mutton and chicken are usually used, but I quite like curried braising steak.  I also whipped up some dahl with garlic, mild spices and black pepper. We had the jackfruit too, which was flavoured with tamarind.

I dived in, eating in the Sri Lankan way with just my hands. Well, just one hand actually. Like in many other cultures, using your left hand is a no-no. I find eating this way lots of fun. You use the hoppers to grab bits of meat and scoop up the vegetables. Goon looked a little intimidated by this method of eating. Then he went and got himself a knife and fork. I don’t think I’ve ever seen hoppers being neatly cut up before. It was a rather strange and funny sight for me. It’s a bit like watching someone eating fish-fingers with chopsticks!

Then again, a fork is useful for getting the curry soaked hopper pieces from the bottom of the plate.

I love this bit of the meal.

Goon really liked the hoppers and was intrigued by the jack fruit. I’d say it is an acquired taste, but I like it, especially in a sour-tangy curry sauce.

So, if you happen to live near a Sri-Lankan store, see if they make and sell string hoppers because I don’t think they’re found in any other cuisine and you’re missing out if you haven’t tried them. They’re definitely my favourite bit of Sri Lankan cuisine.

As I mentioned in my last post, Goon had a couple of friends staying last weekend. I was supposed to be cooking for them, so we’d bought a huge leg of lamb to roast. After all, everyone loves a roast, right?

Wrong. It seems that someone didn’t like potatoes and someone else didn’t like peas, or vegetables in general. Anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time will know about my tolerance of fussy eaters. I really can’t be bothered trying, especially if potatoes and green veg are off the list. So I gave up trying completely  and that’s how we all got stuck with take-away.

That left me and Goon with the problem of what to do with the huge leg after his friends had left. It would feed six at the very least, probably more, so there was no point in us roasting it whole. Goon suggested chopping it into lamb leg steaks, which I thought would have been a great idea if we had a meat cleaver. As it is, we have nothing that could handle the large bone in a lamb leg, but Goon thought he’d improvise anyway.

Goon cut some meat away from the bone He then just hacked chunks off until we had two decent sized steaks, which I marinated in a home made olive, garlic and basil pesto.

The problem was that Goon didn’t know what to do with the rest of the meat, so he just, sort of, hacked at it.

Hmm… well, I have to say it’s actually better than the butchery at a certain place we buy from in Shepherds Bush. At least Goon had managed to keep the bone intact rather than getting shards of it in the meat.

Goon got bored at theis point, wrapped up the meat in cling film (exactly as it is in the picture) and then bunged it in the fridge. It got an interesting (high pitched and whiny) reaction when the blonde flatmate came home and found it.

The pesto for the lamb steaks was a very simple one. I just used olive oil, chopped black olives, chopped garlic and a big bunch of torn basil and popped them in a blender, then tasted and adjusted the ingredient balance until I was happy, This got smeared all over the scored lamb leg steaks.

The next day we hunted around for things to serve with our pesto crusted steaks. We found Jersey Royal potatoes on special offer, and since everyone raves about how fantastic they are, we snatched them up just to see what all the fuss was about. I also spotted some broad beans, which have apparently just come into season, and picked up some feta so I could make a salad with them.

I was pleased with the lamb. The meat took up the marinade flavour very well. I just wish I had some fresh oregano to add to it! The salad worked particularly well. It so happened that I had some peas in the freeezer and half a courgette in the fridge that I could throw into the mix. I also had some rather tired looking mint but just enough was still usable for me to make an mint-infused olive oil dressing.

I see what people mean about the Jersey Royal potatoes. They have a really good texture and a slightly more earthy flavour than other new potatoes.  I still think I prefer Anya potatoes though.

This meal was the first time I’d had broad-beans since I was a kid. It reminded me of going strawberry and broad-bean picking in the school summer holidays. It seems that broad-beans are one of those things I like much more as an adult. Especially with some mint and crumbled feta.

The rest of our lamb has now been cut into bite sized pieces and is sitting in the freezer. I need to think up ways to use it fast since Goon is moving in a week!

It’s been a bad week. A week that involved three take-aways. I am hanging my head in shame.

It wasn’t all my fault. Goon had coursework due in on Thursday and stayed up all night on Wednesday  to finish it. Running two companies and  having a day job while doing a degree isn’t easy. On the same day, I had to do a lot of teaching then I had to (quickly write) and present a seminar for some other PhD students. It’s not easy working one job and doing a PhD either. So both of us were totally knackered out by the evening. We just had to resort to chinese take-away. Goon fell asleep so quickly that the chinese ended up being his breakfast.

Over the next two nights, Goon had some geeks friends visiting. I was going to cook until I heard the list of non-acceptable foods. This included peas , potatoes  and pasta , so I threw my hands up in the air and gave up. 

It’s interesting how, even if it doesn’t hit your waistline immediately, a spell on a diet like that can really make you feel rubbish. On Sunday, i was feeling totally lethargic and I put this down to the bad eating.  To compensate, I thought I’d so something tasty  but I needed to use the duck legs that were sitting in the fridge.  I came up with this.

Here we have two duck legs (they were on offer at Sainsburys, four for £3.29 \o/) which were slow-roasted on a bed of carrots, celery and leeks with garlic and rosemary. One the duck had cooked, the vegetables were stirred into a sauce made from puy lentils cooked with minced onion and garlic in red wine and vegetable stock. I served all this with pearl barley, tossed in herbs and some wilted fresh spinach flavoured with nutmeg. I admit I did add a touch of cream to the spinach, but only a touch. 

On the next day, I really did feel more like myself. The best bit about this meal was that it tasted so wonderfully wholesome. That’s the great thing about this rustic, homely cooking. You can feel it doing you good as you eat it and yet it’s really, really tasty, especially after three consecutive days of fat and stodge. I find lentils addictive, I even get random cravings for them sometimes. And, as for the duck legs, they were roasted long and slow so all the fat came off and we had melt-in the-mouth-meat and perfectly crisp skin. Hooray for ducks. :D

The next night, I followed suit with a chicken-liver and bulgar wheat pilaf.  

Not the most exciting thing to look at, I know, but another meal like these should sort us out completely, and then it will be time for mashed potato!

I’m lucky to have a great, friendly butcher’s shop near my flat. I found it, oddly enough, by reading the River Cottage Meat book which led me to the website of the Guild of Q Butchers. It was there that I discovered that the butcher’s shop H G Walters was literally 10 minutes from my front door.

Since I’ve started visiting them I’ve grown addicted to their maple cure bacon. In fact, all the pork I’ve had from them has been awesome, so last Saturday I decided to try a pork roast. I bought a decent sized  loin of pork, which the butcher untied so I could stuff it.

I’d had a plan to stuff my pork loin with a mixture of pears, walnuts, sage, rosemary and celery and serve it with a stilton sauce. But, when I came to make my roast, I noticed I had a small problem. I’d assumed the butcher would have left the string in for me to re-tie my joint, but he hadn’t. So I rang up Goon to ask him to pick some up on the way home.

Sadly, I underestimated Goon’s capacity for being lazy. Goon stopped off at the small Tesco metro instead of going to the big supermarket. I would have expected both places to stock some kind of string but apparently the small store didn’t and Goon didn’t want to walk the ten minutes extra to the big shop. So he decided to pick up an alternative. I wasn’t too pleased when I found out what he bought.

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, ‘YOU GOT ELASTIC BANDS’!!?”

Goon looked at me me sheepishly. “There wasn’t any string anywhere.”

“You’re honestly telling me that it’s impossible to find string in a large shopping centre in Hammersmith at 8:00pm on a Monday night?!”

 ”You can use these, can’t you?”

I didn’t have a clue how these colourful bits of rubber would fare in a 160 C oven but I was willing to bet they weren’t the best thing to put on my roast.

“I doubt it.”  I said. “They’ll probably snap when they get hot.” Goon started wrapping rubber bands around my pork loin. “STOP IT!” I shouted. 

“I’m sure I’ve seen them used like this before.”

I resentfully agreed to let Goon tie my pork loin with rubber bands on the condition that we test them in the oven first to see what happened. As I’d thought,the bands didn’t like the heat. Within five minutes of them being put in the oven, we had a multi-coloured gloopy mess to scrape off the bottom shelf. 

So much for the elastic band idea. I needed a new plan but by now all the shops had shut and  I couldn’t find anything oven-proof that I could use to secure my pork.

In the end, after a lot of debate, we resorted to skewering. This wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds. The main problem was that the pork skin was very thick so, to get the skewers through, I had to aim for the bits where the skin had been scored. This meant  there weren’t that many places I could skewer the pork so the joint wasn’t held together very well at all!

Yes, I know, it does look ridiculous. But at least i some of the stuffing stayed in. The rest turned into a horrible burnt mess at the bottom of the dish but I think about half survived.  

The pork still cooked well though. It was tasty and juicy and the pear-walnut-stilton combination (that made it) was great with it.  

The rest of the meal worked fine too, although you can’t really go too far wrong with boiled new potatoes and steamed broccoli can you?

Apart from the great quality pork, the stilton sauce was definitely the best bit of the dish. It was made from a little chicken stock which I reduced with some dry cider, white wine and a small sprig of rosemary which was removed at the end. Then I melted in the stilton and added a touch of double cream.

I’m looking forward to trying this idea again with a properly tied joint.  

It appears it is approximately birthday time for my blog. I can only guarantee it is ‘approximately’ because I have no idea exactly when I started writing.

I can already hear some of you saying, “Well just go through your archives and look at the timestamp on the first post, dummy!”  It should be that easy. But, the problem is, I was so keen to start writing, that in the the couple of days leading up to the blog going online, I wrote about ten posts in one go and then just spaced them out over the May archive.

Yes, I am THAT sad.

So, actually, it was sometime in the first week of June 2006 that Living to Eat was really born, and it wasn’t called ‘Living to Eat.’  it was just ‘Roshani’s Food Blog’ until I finally thought of an original title. Now,  after a whole year, it is very strange looking back at my first few months of posting. I had the worst camera in the world and a very dark kitchen. The site was obviously left battered and bruised after the horrible hard drive crash in September. Also the fact that Goon insists on moving the site between servers every few months has taken its toll in the form of other random bugs.*  

I find it interesting how only one of those three blogs I listed in my first post is still on my reading list. My blogging tastes have clearly changed a lot!

But the strangest thing for me is how the purpose of this blog has completely changed over this year. At first I didn’t particularly want anyone to be reading this. It was more a place for me to log my cooking experiences and recipes and to monitor how my cooking skills  were developing. The fact that other people could look in and share was just a bonus. It was Goon that encouraged me to leave my website address on various forums and websites to actively invite people to look. Now this website is, for want of a better phrase, reader-focused and careful documentation of recipes has gone completely out of the window.

And so, even though the blog didn’t turn out quite how I expected, even though I started it the most stupid time possible (at the beginning of my write up year), and even though the site is battered, bruised and bugged from various technical hitches**, I am very happy with the way things have developed here. The blog has meant that I’ve been on the telly, been asked to contribute to a magazine and, most importantly, made some wonderful friends from whom I’ve learned more than I ever expected.

So I’d like to say a huge thank you to all the other food bloggers and other readers who’ve taught me so much. There are way too many to thank individually, but I’m sure you know who you are.  Also thanks to the quiet readership who never say anything but I can see lurking on Google Stats.*** You’ve made a bored maths geek very happy.  

*Have you noticed those little Ás appearing in every post before the last server move? Anyone know how to get rid of them?

** Take heed: Never let a Goon run your website.

***Also thanks to the frustrated beef mince recipe searchers and the guy who came along looking for ‘midget eating cranberry sauce.’ You make me laugh.

Last Sunday, over lunch, I was telling Goon about how I wanted to enter WTSIM no 5 (which Cooksister Jeanne is hosting) but was totally stuck on ideas. The theme this time was stuffed vegetables and fruits.  Goon had a suggestion.

GOON: I know what you can stuff. I’ve seen green wrinkly things. The label said you can stuff them.
ME: Any idea what they are?
GOON: Green wrinkly things.
ME: But what are they called?
GOON: I don’t know. But they’re green and wrinkly.

I was clearly going to get no more information about the mystery vegetable from him and I mentally dismissed the green wrinkly things as some figment of Goon’s imagination. But, that evening, six of them appeared in the kitchen.

I recognised them immediately, although I think I’d describe them as more knobbly than wrinkly. Goon had picked up kerala, which had appeared in my mother’s kitchen from time to time when I was little. It’s a vegetable which, like courgettes and sprouts, drives fear into the hearts of small children.

Here the vegetable is known as bitter gourd. It’s called that for a good reason. In order to remind myself what the kerala tasted like, I cut a tiny sliver from the middle of the largest one and tasted.

For a second I thought it wasn’t so bad but, literally a few seconds later, there seemed to be a small chemical war going on in my mouth.  My face contorted and I made a noise that was something like “GAAAAAAAH!” The next ten minutes were spent trying desperately to drown out the flavour with cherry brandy. It didn’t go easily. *

I was seriously dubious about trying anything with the green knobbly gourd but, since Goon had gone to all the effort of getting it, I thought I’d better make an attempt at cooking it. Some people actively like it, so there must be something I could do to de-bitter my kerala.

I called up my parents to see if they could help me make this strange vegetable edible. Apparently they’d only ever used them in salads and curries, which didn’t really help me with my plans for stuffing, but cooking with sugar and tamarind seemed to be a common theme. The internet also provided me with some help. The bitterness of the kerala could be reduced by scraping off some skin, deseeding it, rubbing it with salt and soaking in cold water. I decided to try and balance the bitter flavour with a very strong sweet and sour stuffing made from tomato, onion,  and lots of sugar and tamarind. After all, it works for chicory. The dish would be an accompaniment to  a Sri-Lankan style goat curry.

I didn’t really know what to expect from my kerala as I began to prepare them, but scraping off the skin was easy enough. It did however leave a big green mess in the kitchen.

Once the skin was off, I cut the kerala in half and looked inside. Like many gourds, it had  a clear divide between the flesh and seed area.

A small knife was ideal to scrape out the seeds. Now there was a cylindrical hole in the gourd which was a perfect shape and size for stuffing. 

So the gourds were salted and soaked for an hour whilst I finished preparing the rest of our dinner: the slow cooked goat curry and spiced rice. I also made a lot of dahl, just in case the gourd was inedible.

The tomato chutney stuffing for the gourd was simple to make. I sweated some onion, added a couple of fresh chopped tomatoes, tomato puree and coriander, then added lots of sugar, tamarind and just a drop or two of vinegar to make it really sweet and tangy. Once the gourds were stuffed I cooked them in the excess tomato concoction.

Now, maybe Goon accidentally found the bitterest bitter gourds in the shop, but even after lots of soaking, these things were still not very nice. Goon ate one piece and said “Why the heck would anyone voluntarily eat these things?” I have to admit, I was thinking the same thing. The sweet and sour flavour certainly helped but, after a few bites, the bitterness was overwhelming. I can’t believe that some people actually eat it without salting it first!

So, if you happen to be a bitter gourd fan, good for you. I don’t get it but I think the sweet-sour thing turned it from totally inedible to the point where I could manage a piece or two. Fortunately there was plenty of curry so we didn’t go hungry.

This is my entry to this month’s Waiter, Waiter event. The roundup will be on Jeanne’s blog very soon, so go and check out the other entries. I’m sure that, unlike me, most people even made something they could eat!

* Which meant I had to drink a lot of cherry brandy. Shame.

Well, perhaps ‘Bogus Journey’ would be more appropriate seeing how poor Marina and Ted ended up. 

I think I have mentioned before that one of Goon’s flatmates is into having late night parties with her church friends in Goon’s living room. When this happens, Goon and I tend to eat out.

The reason why we abandon the kitchen when these parties happen is simple. Like their host, this girl’s friends can be a bit funny about what they term ‘weird food.’ Weird in this case means things such as pigeon, rabbit, and duck as well as ostrich and other alternative meats*.If anything gamey is around, the party host gets a little upset, not wanting to ‘weird out’ her friends.

Unluckily for her, on the day she decided to spontaneously invite people around to the flat, I happened to be cooking one of the weirdest things I have to date.

As she came into the kitchen to make her friends a pot of tea I was busy rinsing a pair of red mullet, which I’d decided to name Marina and Ted after an amusing menu item I’d seen on holiday in Sri Lanka**.

The party host shuddered at the sight of the whole fish, before getting out her supplies. I didn’t say much, in the hope that she wouldn’t turn her eyes in the direction of the hob. However it was only a minute before her attention was caught by the large bubblng pan.

HOST: WHAT is THAT? 
ME: Do you really want to know?
HOST: Uhhh…..
ME: You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you, you know.
HOST: It looks like…an…egg?
ME: Yes, it is an egg.
HOST: WHAT ON EARTH MAKES AN EGG THAT BIG???!

At this point Goon and one of the guests showed up.

GUEST: Hi…where’s the… oh, wow! Is that an ostrich egg? Cool!

I decided I liked this guy.

The host, looking slightly pale with her hand over her mouth, ushered her friend away.  Goon shook his head sadly and said, ”Oh Dear. It’s not a Tesco Value chicken egg. She doesn’t understand.”

The ostrich egg was being boiled in advance so I could make a scotch egg with it in the next couple of days. Dinner for that evening was on Marina and Ted.

The two mullet were in for special treatment. I was using a recipe from Gordon Ramsey’s ‘Secrets’ which involved dissolving some saffron in oil and applying it to the fish skin, which makes the skin a beautiful colour and gives the flesh an amazingly strong saffron flavour. Since there wasn’t much to the two fish, I also stuffed them with some chopped king prawns flavoured with finely chopped parsley and garlic.

As the two fish were being prepared for the oven, another guest wandered in. He came over to where I was, looked at the fish and said “Eurrgh!”

Now, I’ve been told that, when I’m really angry, I have a very scary, psychotic look. I wasn’t really angry at this point, but it appeared my moderate irritation had generated the same expression because this guy looked properly terrified.

He started stammering. ‘ Uh-I-d-don’t…l-like…f-fish.”

Maybe I should feel bad for what happened next. But I don’t .

I bent down so I was on eye level with my two mullet, put my ear close to  their heads and then looked at the guy, careful to hold my psycho expression and said,  ”Marina and Ted say they don’t like you either.” The guy laughed nervously then, perhaps deciding that I might actually be a psychopath, left at speed.

God, I wish I could be that quick all the time.

I was still chuckling to myself as Marina and Ted came out of the oven. I decided to serve them with ratatouille as suggested by the Ramsay recipe, but also added some spiced long grain rice to turn it into a main course

And a very satisfying main course it was too. The saffron really complemented the flavour of the mullet and the ratatouille was perfect with it. I’m glad I added the prawn stuffing as those fish were pretty small.

That was a great meal. I scared the hell out of someone, had tasty food and Goon got to play with the fish skeletons. Perfect!

* Note that normal food by definition is chicken, pork, beef or lamb (flesh only- no offal) frozen peas or potatoes and that all of these must cost less than £1.25 and be packaged with a blue stripy label.

** The misprint on the restaurant menu simply read ‘Marina and Ted  Mullet’. Apparently after correcting spelling and grammar, it would have read ‘red mullet from our marina.’

I tried to stop this, I really did. But Goon insists I post his pictures. 

On Sunday morning, Goon decided to make us breakfast, which I thought was great. He rarely does anything in the kitchen now so I was quite excited to see what he’d produce. I think I must have been a bad influence on him though because, when he’d finished, he came asking for my camera.

Apparently Goon wanted to photograph his creation. Here was his first attempt at photographing what is apparently a ‘Goon Gourmet Omelette.’

This omelette was apparently made from 1 egg and 2 rashers of bacon with some cheese. An ‘interesting’ ratio of ingredients I’m sure you’ll agree. I especially like the use of rosemary and a small chunk of blue cheese as a garnish.

Sadly the omelette turned out to be inedible because Goon didn’t realise that adding a lot of salt to something with that much bacon was a bad idea. But at least he tried. And the second photo actually looked quite cool.

It makes me wish I had natural light at my disposal for my dinner photography.

This has got to be the best thing to come home to after a night out. 

Well, it would have been if things had gone to plan.

I don’t get to go out very often any more. In fact, apart from occasional trips to the pub after seminars with my fellow mathmos, I don’t go out at all. This is why I was so excited about going to my friend’s houewarming party last night. I’d been really good friends with this girl at university but partially lost touch after she finished her degree, so I was looking forward to a big catch up.

My original plan was to stay out until 11:30 and get takeaway on the way home, but the idea of stodge actually made me feel a bit sick. So I went for what was, in my opinion, the next quickest option.

In the afternoon I headed to my local fishmongers (Cape Clear) to buy myself some nice sea bream. The people there are very helpful and they’ll pop a lemon and some parsley in the bag for you with your fish for free. It’s practically a ready meal in a bag but with nice, fresh ingredients and no artificial anything. All I needed to was grill the fish for a few minutes, then add the lemon and chopped parsley and perhaps boil some new potatoes. Could it be any easier?

While I was there I also got to sample some samphire for the first time. I really liked it so I bought a load to go with my fish dinner. After all, it would only take seconds to cook.

So I was all set up for a night out with some friends followed by coming back to a gorgeous, tasty dinner. My mistake was trying to take Goon with me. After I’d planned to leave at 7pm, Goon turned up at  7:15 and somehow then spent 40 minutes in the shower. So, by the time he was ready to go, we were over an hour late and, with the tube engineering works, we’d end up spending twice as much time travelling than we would at the party.

So no night out for me.

Dinner was still tasty though, and I got to try out the interesting new vegetable whilst sober, which certainly wouldn’t have happened if I went out. Another plus side is that I can submit my samphire to Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging which is hosted by Rinku from Cooking in Westchester this week.

Even though samphire has been eaten in Britain for ages (hundreds of years), a remarkable number of people (well, at least amongst the students I hang out with) haven’t heard of it. For some reason it doesn’t make it’s way into the supermarkets but is sold in proper fishmongers. The plant comes in several different varieties. The one I got hold of was marsh samphire. Apparently rock samphire is sometimes also eaten pickled and is a delicacy in Lancashire and Northumbria.

I think marsh samphire is a wonderful vegetable, with a pleasant flavour, that is a bit like salty asparagus, and a crisp crunchy texture. It’s a great thing to eat alongside fish. When I tried it for the first time at the fishmongers, I had it raw, but usually it is blanched in hot water for a few seconds or steamed for a very short time to lessen its saltiness. Last night, I went for the first option, then tossed it in lemon and butter.

This whole meal literally took 15 minutes to cook, and most of that was taken up by waiting for the potatoes to boil. The fish, after its skin was rubbed with salt, had about 8 minutes under the grill. I spent two minutes incinerating some parsley to add to some melted butter for a makeshift sauce and the samphire was done in seconds.

So who needs ready meals when you’ve got fish? \o/ Well, people who don’t like fish obviously, but I’ve never really understood them anyway