I think I’ve given up trying to be a gourmet chef. I’ve tried, God knows I’ve tried. But it’s hard. The attention to detail. The need for quality ingredients. The hours of preparation. But, in reality, I’m more a Man v Food kind of cook: pile it high and …eat it.
For this session I tried to create something that employed food rings – I mean anything that requires food rings has to be haute cuisine right? Even cheese and chicken pancakes.
Of course the problem with preparing great big lumps of tender meat dripping with rich wine-based sauces is that no one else wants to eat them. So in the interests of maintaining a healthy marriage I do like to delve into the depths of vegetarian cuisine.
But chickpeas, lentils….spelt!? Come on. I’d end up growing a tail and start nibbling raw carrot. So I’m always looking out for UVCs (Unusual Vegetable Creations). And here we focus on the Aubergine. ‘Aubergine’? Alright the Eggplant. But I can’t call it that because it neither has the shape of an egg, nor the colour (Why is it called an eggplant? Come to think of it, why is it called an aubergine? I’m renaming it – ‘Purple Shiny Potato’).
Salmon is a staple in this house because it is a protein we will both eat (the kids eat anything, unless its green). But hunting around, looking for exciting things to do with salmon can be quite tedious.
So when the wife came home with a big bag of kale (she does that, comes home with exciting new taste sensations – little pots of stuff, bags of greenery, although I must admit not usually unusual cuts of meat) I thought an opportunity had arisen to come up with something different.
So using all my powers of culinary creativity I came up with…..potato fritters, cakes patties, etc. But there is a sting in the tale – kale holds a secret I was unaware of…..
The BBC, that bastion of investigative journalism (if you’ve been following the news recently you’ll know I’m being sarcastic oh deeeeaaaar) also does a nice line in all things food related. A couple of times a year it takes over big exhibition centres and fills them with foodies. We went to the summer event and liked it that much we took the kids to the winter version in London. Getting the train into London is a drab affair though, so I filmed it and shoved the Bellamy Brothers on…
(I’m not sure why I would want to share a drab miserable train trip to London, with no views and grey skies, but I guess I just like playing with the movie maker)
Every now and then you see a fellow blogger’s creation that takes your fancy. Rather than leave a comment ‘I want to make that’ and then immediately forget about it, you just go ahead and make it. Now such a thing happened when I found this recipe for Dauphinoise potatoes by the Greedy Frog. I found it via another blog but I can’t remember which one, yes I can it’s at 5 Kinds of Rice
Anyway the key thing with the recipe is that, contrary to popular belief, there is no room for cheese. Unfortunately I couldn’t deal with that revelation so I shoved a load of cheese in mine.
