Tuesday 1 March 2011

Visiting Eats

Gosh, I'm getting so lazy with this blogging lark. Though I have had a lot of visits recently, to be fair. And I did try to post this yesterday, but either this website or my computer was being silly and none of my pictures would upload. Anyway, the weather has been utterly and really bizarrely lovely.


So on Tuesday, I had the leftover curry from Emily's birthday.

I made a raita to go with it, and since the raita at the restaurant had been delicious and slightly more than just yoghurt and cucumber, I tried to make mine fancy. I added cumin, and lots of dried mint, and garlic, and if I'm honest I can't actually remember, but am just suggesting likely things. Basically, it was good.


As ever, the curries were amazing.

Wednesday night, I threw together what I had in the fridge to make some sort of pasta salad. I think there was chicken, pasta, olives, tomato, basil, and lots of mayonnaise. It was good. I should make these more often. It's always the olives that make it.


I was too lazy to put it in a bowl. What is becoming of me?

Thursday lunch saw me eating a sort of club sandwich thing. I ate all my tomato on Wednesday, so it was lacking that, but there was bacon and lettuce and toast and mayo - and some average turkey stuff. And pink juice, which is amazing.


Then my mum arrived, so naturally I cooked for her. She recently gave me Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals, so I thought I'd cook something out of that. It's organised into menus, all of which take 30 minutes. Sort of self-explanatory, really. I made the mushroom risotto, and it was delicious. I've only cooked risotto once before, but it was easy and yummy. I'll certainly be doing it again.


For pudding, I made the rasberry cheesecakes that are on the same 'menu' as the risotto. (There was a spinach salad too, but I was too lazy to make that.) The cheesecakes were amazing - crushed biscuits, then lemon curd, then crème fraîche mixed with a bit of icing sugar, then rasberries and grated chocolate. They were really easy and were really good. I'm not much of a fan of cheesecake, but these were nice and fresh and not too cloying. I think I got the layers in the wrong order, but who gives a fig?


Naturally, my mum wanted to go shopping in Glasgow so we stopped at a 'French' café in the city centre. I'd been once before with my dad but only for coffee and was eager to try the food.  I say 'French' because it's so over the top 'French' - it's lovely, but perhaps not especially accurate. In fact, this was only proven by a poncy French man who at one point walked past and shouted at us something along the lines of, 'That's nothing like French! Stupid English!' which begs two questions - for one, why was he here if he has such contempt for us; and for another, surely Scottish? Anyway, I had a salade Niçoise with a piece of salmon on the top, and my mum had the soupe du jour (see, I learnt something whilst eating!) which was mushroom.

 

The soup was fantastic, really thick and mushroomy (though we realised it was tuning out to be a pretty mushroomy weekend, what with the risotto and everything) with these amazing crunchy croutons on top and big chunks of 'shroom floating around. My salad was equally good - the only thing was the bizarre amount of fresh coriander that was in it. Now, I wouldn't mind, but there was a lot, and it's hardly traditional - it just didn't taste quite right. It did occur to me that perhaps they'd mistaken it for flat-leaf parsley? Which would make a lot more sense, but it's not that easy to mistake them if you're a chef, for heaven's sake. However, rant over - the rest of it was delicious. The eggs were a bit over-boiled, but the salmon was perfectly cooked and seasoned, and the dressing was really lemony and sharp. There weren't too many potatoes, either - that's a pet hate of mine. I'm definitely looking forward to going back there to try some more food; it was generally really good, and my mum said the coffee was nice too - which is massively high praise for her.

We went again to Mother India's Café; sadly the food got the better of me and not for the first time I completely failed to take any pictures. However, it was amazing, and my mum said it was the best meal she's ever had.

Then before my concert, we went with a couple of my friends to Ketchup again - I'm almost becoming a regular - though burgers aren't really my mum's thing. However, I nicked a menu last time we were there so she managed to find something she'd be happy eating.

She got an aptly named 'Rabbit Food' burger; I think it was pretty bog-standard veggie burger material, but it looked quite nice and she ate most of it. I got the 'Goodfella' - the basic burger with mozzarella, pepperoni, and a garlic and herb mayo.


It was nice, though I was disappointed by how little mozzarella there was - and why would you not put the cheese on top of the burger? So it didn't melt properly either. But the garlic and herb mayo was a nice touch. My friend Frank got something or other with Jack Daniel's barbeque sauce on it, which was utterly scrummy and I'll be having that next time for sure. There's a burger with JD barbeque sauce, bacon, fried onions and a fried egg... watch this space!

Anyway, I had a lovely weekend what with everyone coming to stay. And, I'm afraid, that's the end of fun posts for a while, for two reasons: one, I'm completely skint - like, completely and utterly; and two, I need to eat what's in my freezer. So I'll keep posting, but they'll be short and sweet and quite possibly boring. It won't last, I promise! So do keep reading...

1 comment:

  1. The most important elements of a club sandwich are the bacon and mayo - as long as you have those, you're good.

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