I don’t think that there’s anything as nice, in the summer months, as coronation chicken, served with a jacket potato and salad. And it’s so easy to make - cooked chicken, mayonnaise, apricot jam and curry paste.
We’re having a lovely evening this evening, chilling in front of the television. Sausage casserole with baked potatoes and then one of my favourite deserts - blueberry creme brulee, but made with Greek yoghurt instead of cream or creme fraiche.
Take some blueberries, add a little water and sugar, and heat until the blueberries plump up and burst, then cool.
When the blueberries are cool, put them in the bottom of shallow dishes. Cover with natural Greek yoghurt, and top with demerara sugar. Then put under the grill, or use a blow torch, until the demerara sugar is caramelised. Serve immediately.
(But that’s the last time that Chris and Hannah are having any, because they are so rude about the ‘dishes’ which we serve it in, calling them flower pot holders)!
Some years ago, we experimented with cooking chicken pieces in different flavoured sauces. There was one sauce which we liked so much that it received the accolade of becoming our permanent Sauce of the Month. We don’t use the sauce on a monthly basis - but the whole family knows what it means when we say that we’ve got Sauce of the Month for dinner.
And Sauce of the Month is made up of variable quantities of sieved tomatoes, creme fraiche and tarragon. Go on, try it - it’s delicious!
Because we have never successfully mastered the art of labelling items we put into the freezer, sometimes what comes out of the freezer is a bit of a lucky dip. Of course, things like bread, milk, ice cream, cakes, sausages, pizza and all sorts of other things are instantly recognisable. But there are things in the freezer, like meal portions, which take on a much more elusive identity. I pulled out a container from the freezer for tonight’s meal, which turned out to be chili con carne. And it was great. But when we want to be surprised we have a lucky dip in the freezer - and more often than not we are pleasantly surprised.
What’s in your freezer?
We enjoy experimenting with cheesecake recipes. Margie made a cheesecake this week based on a recipe by Mary Berry. It’s a baked white chocolate cheesecake. I think that this particular recipe is one of my favourites, although other members of the family prefer the white chocolate with raspberries cheesecake, which isn’t baked.
This dessert made the perfect end to our Sunday lunch.
Sunday lunch is a great occasion each week. Margie and I enjoy sharing lunch with Hannah and Chris, and with Debz of course. We don’t normally have time to cook a roast, and we occasionally use the opportunity to experiment.
We had one such experiment this week. For each of us I wrapped a sausage with a rasher of smoked bacon, which I wrapped in a slice of turkey breast, and then I covered each of the parcels of meat with stuffing. Cooked with a little red wine, it was delicious. We served it with roasted vegetables and red cabbage cooked with apple and onion.
It’s Chris’ birthday today, and we’ve had our traditional birthday tea. Ever since I was a young boy (and that’s a long time ago), we’ve had hot dogs for tea whenever someone has a birthday. So we had hot dogs today, roasted onions and some baked beans.
A great birthday tradition, which I hope we’ll never grow out of!
Roses, one of our local bakers, produces a multiseeded loaf that is absolutely wonderful. It’s expensive - they charge £1.90 for a large loaf. But, in my humble opinion, it’s probably consistently the best bread I have ever tasted. But don’t tell anyone, because the one thing that I don’t want is a run on these loaves so that they don’t have one left when I go and buy one.
Today is my day off, and I’m making some soup. The soup I’m making this afternoon is ‘throw the kitchen sink at it’ soup. I’ve cooked some beans and pulses, sauteed some onions and bacon, then added carrots, potatoes, baby sweetcorn and butternut squash. All this was added to tinned tomatoes and chicken stock, with some herbs and seasoning, and it’s on the boil now.
If you want some, let me know!
I love watercress. The only problem with buying watercress in the supermarket is that it doesn’t have a very good shelf life. But my eyes lit up when I visited our local Sainsbury last night. They were selling ‘living watercress’. It’s in a pot, and you need to keep it well watered. But you harvest it as you want it.
I’ve seen living salad on the supermarket shelves before, but not watercress. I’ll report back as to whether it kept well.
