The Sacred Art of Eating

I made tea last week; Dougal’s been doing most of the cooking of late and I felt I owed him a night off. I had some lamb steaks in the freezer so looked online, found a promising looking recipe with good reader comments, and cooked. It was awful. Such a waste of lamb, so much so I don’t even want to tell you about it, and thoroughly demoralising to someone who is feeling out of the loop with cooking and missing her mojo.

This week, Lisa posted on facebook that she’d cooked a Nigel Slater Lamb Recipe. I’d come across this recipe when looking last week but had thought it seemed to summery, not suited to a dreich winter’s evening. (Two posts in a month using the word dreich, can you tell it’s November?) But Lisa’s enthusiasm for the recipe made me give it a second look. I reasoned that with mashed potatoes it might be just the ticket. We had some more lamb chops in the freezer (lamb packs had been on three for a tenner in the supermarket!) and I grabbed some fresh herbs in Roots, Fruits and Flowers on Byres Road in Glasgow, near uni. (I could have gone to the new proof that Glasgow is okay really Waitrose, which is next door, but you have to shop local, right? Plus the packs were the same price and although not stating their actual contents, I reckon the packs in RFF (from ScotHerbs, so more local-ish, presumably) were a shade bigger). D got the feta, lemon and some veg to keep me happy, and we were away.

The premise is a bit like Ed’s Tender Rump- griddled meat plus tasty dressing- although without any post-cooking ‘marinading’, you simply dress the hot chops in the oil-lemon-feta-oregano-thyme-pepper mixture. I’d maybe use a wee shade less feta next time (I think it’s easy to over do) but otherwise even though it looked a little like omg my lamb is covered in bits of plant! more was generally good, regards this dressing.

Indeed, this was absolutely scrummy. I highly encourage you to cook it! Ken, I’m thinking of you seeing as you have oregano and thyme in the garden! (Plus your woody stemmed thyme is far easier to pick the leaves from than supermarket stuff!) Also, any spare dressing is excellent stirred through the mashed potato.

Delighted to have made a small return to form. And to the kitchen. :o)

A friend had a ‘Regression Party’ on Saturday night, to celebrate her quarter century. She got to dress up as Dogtanian, there were all sorts of party foods (little sandwiches, Party Rings, Jammie Dodgers, sausage rolls, carrot sticks and cucumber, and of course Birthday Cake with Candles) and people got to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Pass The Parcel and Musical Statues and other jolly things.

Because the birthday girl’s Mummy and Daddy weren’t on hand to organise everything, guests were invited to contribute to the feast making. I initially decided not to take anything, because I was too busy with university coursework- in fact I had already agreed that apart from this pre-scheduled party there were to be NO social events scheduled for the weekend. But then I remembered Jelly. Which doesn’t really take up a lot of time. Even if you do three colours. Which I did:

I’m afraid I forgot to take any pics; this one was taken in the poor light of the hall by the birthday girl’s friend, MH. Still picks up the colours of the jelly very nicely though! I was awfy proud of it and tried not to be too sulky that everyone else seemed more interested in the other (guest-brought) jelly (which had vodka and fruit-yuk-in it).

(I’m sorry to admit there was actually no ice cream. but that’s beside the point, I wasn’t going to spoil a good title was I?!)

It cannot be all bad, spending a rainy weekend writing an essay.

Flapjack from the recipe Dougal made it by as a child, from A Young Cook’s Calendar by Katie Stewart. Yum.