The Sacred Art of Eating

Two meals, two nights in a row, to give Dougal something to look forward to when studying and keep me engaged in the kitchen.

• Feta, Tomato and Pesto Tartlet
• Nigella’s Nectarine and Blueberry Galette

As you might be able to tell, I’d bought a packet of all-butter puff pastry but wanted it to do two nights. Seemed a bit much to scoff it all in a one-er!

The tartlets I created based on a bit of reading around on the internet. Pesto seemed to be the done thing to line the tart with, and we had a massive basil plant at the time, so I blasted some up in the food processor with pine nuts/parmesan/garlic/olive oil, which did the trick nicely. Then some halved baby plum tomatoes, loads of feta, and into the oven for a bit. Came out looking pretty foxy I think- I especially like the cutting on the diagonal!

Tasted pretty smashing too!

The following night, for pudding, I revisited Nigella’s galette, a hastily flung together pud, no poshness involved. Half the size of last year which made it look rather cute- but also the kind of thing you could polish off between two just fine! (I think we did still spin it out to a couple of sittings though).

We had no apricot jam (I think for the challenge I bought it specially, can you imagine?) but just the day before my mother had presented me with two jars of made-the-day-before raspberry jam (my favourite!) which I felt could hardly hurt the thing. So, pastry lined with a mixture of fabby dabby mummy jam mixed with cream, scattered with slices of fab nectarine (Waitrose Perfectly Ripe) and some blueberries out of the freezer. Again, bake for a bit and serve, well, however you like. We might have gone for greek yoghurt, I honestly can’t remember!

a good bun maketh the bbq…

One of the great things about Dougal now being so comfortable making bread is that he can whip up a batch to suit any occasion. Right now (although yesterday by the time you guys read this!!) he is putting together two types of bread sticks for the Bring-A-Dish Picnic I am having as my send off (part two!) from work tomorrow. And, when earlier this year we were invited to our first ever 4th of July BBQ (’America, Fuck Yeah!’) he was able to save us all from the horror of foamy burger buns and hotdog rolls with some preservative free brilliance. Even better, out friend Mat (who’s been baking for *years* but really come into his own recently, I feel) brought some too (he brought burger buns, D, hotdog buns- kinda like stars and stripes, y’know?) which complimented each other brilliantly.

Some people at the barbeque still ate the foamy buns in bags they’d brought. There was no shortage of bread (we took some home) but maybe they felt it was wasteful to leave theirs. Or maybe they didn’t like chewing…

Whilst away on our little Highland tour back in, ahem, June, we ate picnic lunches pretty much every day.

We found the combo of rolls, cherry tomatoes (which were in Greenhouse Season and tasted a-bleedin-mazing), soft goats’ cheese, salad leaves, and big dods of salami cut with a pen knife made for great lunches every day. We also found that any moment on a road trip can be greatly improved by the sharing of an apple.

And lastly, just some snaps of some of the notable food we ate along the way:

Rocpool Restaurant, Inverness

Old Inn, Gairloch (I’ve already shown you the Seafood Stack)

And if apples won’t do it- if your Driver is really down- then Jelly Babies are probably the way forward.

Don’t know where the time goes, sorry. Had an absolutely fantastic tea tonight: yesterday had got sausages out of the freezer with the intention of doing bangers & mash and then last night happened upon Maggie’s write up of Nigel’s recipe for just that!

I had the necessary additives in the fridge- cream, mainly- and went with the Dijon mustard rather than the parsley flavouring for the mash. Even though a tablespoon of mustard seems like loads the mash was only very, very mildly piquant. I’d use at least double next time, I reckon. Of course perhaps my mustard has gone past it….and I’ll get used to using loads and then one day open a new jar and blow Dougal’ and my tastebuds to kingdom come!

Scrummy scrummy meal though, unctuous creamy mash, tasty sausages (from Asda’s happy pigs and apples of unknown mental wellbeing) masses of runner beans (which tasted dead buttery despite the addition of no butter at all!).

It made me want to get back to blogging. So I shall try, a little harder, again. My sincere apologies to my parents who will think I waited for them to go on holiday before beginning a deluge of posts. Deluge. You may not get to hold me to that!