Rösti and salmon

I've been craving rösti for some time now. 'Well, no more!', I thought to myself as I bought some potatoes.

Along with my rösti, I had some salmon. Let me clarify - a while ago Marks and Sparks had a deal on where you could buy three packets of fish for £10. Naturally, being the freezer-addicted fish fan I am, I took advantage, and along with some sea bass and the squid you saw last night, I bought a packet of 'Lightly Smoked Salmon Fillets'. I've seen them around a lot recently - I think they're pretty much smoked salmon but you have to cook it. Anyway, I just wasn't sure what to eat with them. Now with normal smoked salmon I love this idea I got from Tessa Kiros's book Falling Cloudberries - it's very Swedish. You have the smoked salmon, then a small pile each of red onion, capers, dill, lemon sections, and chopped hard-boiled egg white and yolk. She suggests serving it with potato pancakes. Now, I can never be bothered boiling an egg, If I'm honest, and I don't like dill. But the onion and capers are really good with the salmon.

Anyway, I didn't have any normal smoked salmon, did I? So I decided to just slice up my salmon fillet and fry it really quickly - y'know, just so I didn't get food poisoning. It's never fun when that happens.

Alright, so I didn't have any red onion either. But the spring onions sufficed, and I had some sour cream too. It was really good, actually - rösti are so easy to make and they're delicious. I should definitely cook them more often. Any suggestions on what else to eat them with?

On a scale of one to yummy - a 15.

'Quick Calamari Pasta'

So you remember my delicious pasta that I ate with prawns? It was hardly a long time ago, come along now. It was yummy.

Anyway, you'll remember also that I planned to make one of Nigella Lawson's recipes, called Quick Calamari Pasta. Well, I'm sure you'll be delighted to know that I made it just last night. (Naturally, I had squid in the freezer or I wouldn't have made it otherwise. I am boycotting any recipe that doesn't use at least one thing from the freezer.)

It was pretty easy, really - you just put the pasta on to boil and while it's cooking you fry some spring onion, chilli, and garlic in oil until they look a bit soft. Then you add the squid, let that fry for two minutes, add some white wine, let that bubble for two minutes, then add a blob of butter and some pasta cooking water. The you drain the pasta  and mix it with the sauce and some parsley.

Obviously it looks nothing like the photo in the book, but - it was possibly the best pasta dish I've ever had. It was amazing. So simple and yet so deeply salty and sea-ey. I livened it up a bit with a squirt of lemon and some pepper - I put pepper on everything - and seriously, I could have eaten at least twice this amount. Yumboes. My only quandary was whether to put more chilli in or not - it wasn't very spicy but then again it would have taken away from the squiddiness if it were.

On a scale of one to yummy? About an 18....

Panino.

Yes, that is the correct singular form of panini. Yes, I am a pedant. No, I am not a member of Pedants Anonymous. I am not anonymous.

I had dancing last night, and the mistake I always make is to forget about dancing and eat a massive tea, leaving me lumbering round the dance floor like an elephant with wind. So last night I cunningly planned to have a light tea. When we were at Morrison's (Oh heavenly Morrison's!) they had panini on sale, so I bought one.

The instructions were to microwave it - it has a special 'crisping sleeve'. Apparently. I dutifully followed the instructions, and out it came. I was seriously disappointed by the lack of cheese, especially since most of it had fallen out. But I squidged it back in and squirted over the 'pesto' sauce, which tasted mostly of dried oregano but was still tasty. And the chicken was seriously moist. It was really, really good. I think I'd definitely have one again, especially if they're on sale. And I was light on my feet at dancing!

On a scale of one to yummy? A 16.

Weekend Feasting

I was out partying hard on Friday night (for which read watching Breakfast at Tiffany's and stuffing my face with popcorn), so naturally I had a lie-in on Saturday. In fact, I had so much of a lie-in it was actually lunch time when I got up, which felt a bit odd. I usually get up quite early. (I told you I wasn't a proper student.) Anyway, my room-mate wasn't awake yet so I had brunch in bed.

That last picture is of my soup accompaniments - toast, crackers, and some cheese. Now, this is possibly the bizarre-est cheese combination I have ever had. The wedge next to the brown cracker is some Brie de Meaux that I bought from a ridiculously over-priced cheese shop. I shan't be patronising them again. But it was delicious. Anyway, the other piece of cheese is a Dairylea Strip Cheese which was on offer at Iceland. Do you see what I mean? But they were both as good as one another in their own special ways. It was a good brunch. And I managed not to get any crumbs in the sheets.

Saturday was spent trailing round Glasgow city centre in search of a green cardigan (I got one in the last shop we went to, of course - Primark, £3. Wonder how long it'll last?) so naturally I was starving when I got back. Meatballs always do the trick (and also help in the freezer-emptying quest...) AND I had meatball sauce from Ikea!

It's a messy plate but it was good. Swedish-stylee, babe.

Moving on... I had vanilla ice-cream, ginger nuts and golden syrup for pudding.

Possibly the best pudding I have ever had.

Breakfast on Sunday:

You can never turn down a hot cross bun.

Now, I must justify my lunch on Sunday. Though actually, no - I eat fairly healthily normally and I needed something quick and filling and I'd run out of bread. And after all, it's my tummy. Here, then, is my delectable bowl of bacon-flavoured Supernoodles...

Mmmmmmm. Though as usual I couldn't eat more than half - they are just so ridiculously salty.

My friends and I went to see Russell Howard live last night - he was amazing - so we were round at my friends' house for tea. We'd been food shopping in the day (we got the train out to Morrisons. It was like coming home. I don't think I've ever felt so at peace with the world...) so we were absolutely tired out and in need of sustenance. The shops were selling Easter things on special offer, so I had a caramel bunny...

It was just what I needed.

We bought some pizzas and things to share: olive(s), dough balls, Pizza Express ham and mushroom, the same but pepperoni, and tomato and garlic bread.

They were all really good. The tomato bread was especially good dipped in the olive juice. There was tiramisu for pudding but I didn't like it... I just finished the dough balls instead.

It was a super weekend.

New pasta and prawns.

So the epic freezer-emptying continues! I have countless portions of prawns in there - no, that's not true. I've catalogued them, let's be honest with one another. I used two last night, so now I have one portion of little prawns and two portions of king prawns. So there.

Well, now that's off my chest, we can get on with what I actually ate. My friend Emily took me to this amazing health-food shop (you don't catch me saying that very often) and I found this beautiful pasta:

A similar one is in Kitchen (by Nigella Lawson) called calamari and she cooks it with squid. I'm going to try that some point soon; there's squid in my freezer as well as all those prawns. But last night I fancied prawns and tomato sauce, something my lovely dad used to cook for me. I'm aware that makes him sound like he's dead; he's not. Just clarifying. Anyway, I fried some celery, spring onion, and garlic in some garlic oil and butter, with some dried tarragon and fresh thyme. Then I sploshed in some white wine and passata and let it bubble away.

Anyway, I boiled up my new pasta in the Italian fashion. Well, I just cooked it. Y'know.

Shoved the prawns and some parsley in, served it up (to myself) and ate it. Yum.

The pasta was amazing. It was really sort of thick, but soft and tender. I'm not describing it very well, I know - just rest assured it was delicious. And the shape was fun to eat. It was like giant pasta-y Hula Hoops. Because that's what they are.

On a scale of one to yummy? 17. I'm having it for tea again in half an hour.

An experiment.

I hate Wednesdays. I mean it - I really dislike them. It's nothing personal - it's the fault of my timetable. From one o'clock until bedtime, I have nothing. It's so boring. No tutorials, lectures, clubs, orchestra, nuffink.

So I'm sure you can imagine the excitement that lit up my face when my friend Iveta presented me with a challenge. Could we make a £1 Tesco Value pizza taste good?

No, alright. I wasn't excited. I was bored as heck after an entire afternoon of cutting up cookery magazines, and very very dubious.

Yes, I'm aware that that's an empty wrapper. I didn't want to repulse you. It seriously looked horrid. The cheese was all on one side and the base looked like cardboard. The challenge was not looking good.

I started by sprinkling it with copious amounts of basil and oregano, and Iveta donated some mushrooms and smoked ham. We added extra cheese and some olives that were in my fridge. At this point, it actually looked quite pretty.

We felt there was no more we could do. So we shoved it in the oven and waited, hearts pounding and with baited breath. Just kidding. It's Tesco Value. Oh, I drizzled it with my magic garlic oil, too.

Look! Edible goodness! It worked! We are culinary geniuses. Kind of. Well, it was alright. It needed salt and pepper. A lot of pepper. But mainly, the point is, that it was edible and tasted mostly of olives and mushroom. And it was a massive pizza. For a quid, this was a bargain.

Look, I wasn't promising Michelin-starred essence-of-fennel-coated-veal-with-shavings-of-southern-french-peasant. You can't polish something nasty (if the saying is what I think it is, I don't wish to type it). But it filled us up, and didn't taste actively unpleasant.

On a scale of one to yummy? About an 8.

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...