ghoti_mhic_uait

Yesterday, I completely forgot the challenge in the morning and had a boring but functional and tasty English muffin with ham on one side and taramasalata & smoked salmon on the other. It was our day for the zoo, so I had a baked potato in the zoo cafe, and then pizza at home for tea. So today is catch up.

Fridays, we normally eat no meat. I fancied something with pickled walnuts, and my normal recipe for this feeling, pickled walnut & saffron pilaff wouldn't be new. So I googled, before finding nothing suitable and giving in, we had pasta with pickled walnut and cheese sauce:

Chop & sweat as many onions as you can be bothered (I used 3 onions). Now would be a good time to throw in random veg (I used a bulb of fennel) Add a spoonful of cornflour and a splash of milk, mix to a roux, then add about half a pint of milk. If you haven't lost your blender attachment, blend (well, that was my intention anyway). Add a boursin (I actually used President alternative, because Ocado suggested it as a cheaper option) and stir. Chop or crumble half a jar of pickled walnuts, and add those.

Judith doesn't eat sauce, that was about right for three adults and a baby (one of the adults is a teenager, but foodwise, same thing).

Then for pudding I made
chocolate caramel cake in a mug. It would have been better if I'd made them separately, rather than mixing 4x quantities and attempting to microwave them all at the same time. Also, if I'd had proper baking caramels, rather than just using elderly chocolate caramel sweets. I haven't managed to source salted baking caramels, they sound amazing so if you know where I can get some, or even tell me a brand name, I'd be very grateful.

So, we decided to do the cookbook project that nou_cooks does. So, Colin chose a book, the 'BBC Good Food Let's Cook 52 Simple Suppers'. Due to a surprise (but very welcome) dinner invitation from libellum, we ended up having the pudding yesterday and the dinner today.

Anyway, it was:

Orange Crumb Salmon (Salmon fillets topped with a breadcrumb mix and roaasted. The breadcrumb mix is breadcrumbs, olive oil, orange zest and parsley. It has a sauce of mayonnaise thinned with orange juice and more parsley. I forgot to buy mustard powder, so had to use English mustard from a jar, and the mayo was a bit mustardy, but never mind.)
Warm potato and broccoli salad (potatoes and broccoli parboiled, fried with an onion, and then a dressing of oil, mustard and white wine vinegar, with crispy bacon stirred in.

Lemon curd brulee (Cream and lemon curd, bruleed)

All the dishes were very nice, and I'll probably make them all again; the salmon recipe would probably work with chicken fillets instead of salmon.