God bless Nigel!

We are not very religious people but we do worship somethings/people. For example we both worship Jonny Wilkinson, especially his right foot. I regularly give thanks for the existence of Le Creuset. Todays post is about someone that is also high revered, Nigel Slater. I love the way he writes about food. I am currently enjoying his Eating for England book. This Saturday we went to the Farmers Market and bought some lamb loin chops, with a recipe of Nigel's in mind. This recipe is from his Kitchen Diaries book. The orginial recipe contains aubergine but Nigel doesn't like people to follow his recipes to the letter. So we adapted it to the veg we had from our box.

• 1 onion, sliced thickly
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
• 6 tomatoes, halved
• 6 small potatoes, halved lengthwise
• 1 turnip, chopped into large chunks
• 1 courgette, chopped into large sticks
• 4 lamb double loin chops
• Olive oil

Into a large roasting tin put the onion, turnip, garlic cloves , tomatoes and potatoes. Add about a tablespoon or so of olive oil, toss the veg so they are covered and season. If we had some thyme or rosemary I would have put this in too. Put this into a oven gas mark 6 for 30 mins.

After 30 mins, add the courgette and then top with the lamb chops. Turn the oven up gas mark 7 and cook for another 30 mins.

We love this recipe, its a roast dinner without all the washing up. Thank you Nigel!

Asparagus risotto

After picking our own asparagus last weekend and watching the first episode of River Cottage Spring. I now had a taste for it. So for dinner tonight we had Nigel Slater's asparagus and lemon risotto from The Kitchen Diaries book. Its very simple just add asparagus (which have been prepared and chopped into bite sized pieces) after adding the first couple of ladles of stock. When the rice is cooked, stir in some parmesan and the juice and rind of a lemon.


As the asparagus season is so short you really need to make the most of it. I am sure that I will post more asparagus recipes before the season is over.

A nice healthy lunch!

On Saturday I went to the lab to do some work in the morning. For lunch we had Nigella's Hot Mushroom Sandwich, which is actually found in Nigel Slater's Real Food. When we first discovered this recipe we ate it quite a lot. Which is probably not a good thing as it isn't the healthiest meal, oh well. I remember when I worked for Sainsbury's during my summer break from University and some of the friendlier customers used to ask me what I was studying. So I told them that I was doing a degree in nutrition and they would reply "well don't look to closely at whats in our trolley". Little did they know that as nutrition student I knew what was healthy and what wasn't but that didn't mean that I always ate the good stuff. Everything in moderation if you ask me.

Anyway, all you do for the sandwich is make a garlic and parsley butter, put it on top of the mushrooms and cook in an oven until they are soft. We then put a generous coating of Dijon mustard on the bottom of a soft roll, then put the mushroom on top, squeeze on some lemon. Finally you mop up the buttery mushroom juices with the top of the roll. Delicious.


For dinner Andrew cooked Hugh-FW's leek rarebit, which was very yummy as well.

Waste not want not

After a Saturday morning and early afternoon in the lab, I had a bit of a lazy afternoon. Now Andrew has a full time, he can only spent evenings and weekends writing his thesis. So thats what he did on Saturday.

For dinner we had chicken curry from Nigel Slater's Real Cooking. I love this dish so much. One of the things that makes this dish is that you take the chicken thighs out of the sauce after they are cooked and put them into the oven to give a crispy skin. I love chicken skin so much, it's the first thing I have taste of after a chicken has come out of the oven after a good roasting. As Nigel says its not authenic but who cares when it tastes so good. Andrew prepared some flatbreads to go with the curry, which was also accompanied by a beer for a hard days work. Oh, and some mango chutney from the Jam Kitchen @ Craigie's Farm. Its the best I have tasted! There was loads of sauce left over from the curry so we kept it for dinner on Sunday.



Today we made our way to Loch Lomond so Andrew could do some climbing. I held the rope as the climbs at Ardvorlich were too hard for me. It was so nice to be outdoors after being in the lab all week.

When we got back and I prepared a vegetable curry by boiling potatoes, carrots and swede. Then I fried them with some mushroms and then added the sauce and left it simmer for a while. If possible the sauce tasted better today and it meant that the sauce wasn't wasted.