In My Kitchen

Last week in my kitchen

~ a jug of parsley

~ a lentil tart made with leftover lentil bolognese (red lentils cooked with onions, tomatoes, herbs- just like a meat bolognese). When cool the leftover lentils became quite firm so that I could spoon them into a part-baked pastry case. I added some grated cheddar and baked it for half an hour. It was very tasty with salad and new potatoes.

~ a couple of crusty loaves. I've given up using tins for my bread because I like the oval shape of the slices these long loaves produce and they seem more fitting for spreading with savoury things like pesto and tapenade. 

~  Kitchen flowers

~ Chicken marinating in honey, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger and garlic waiting to be stir-fried with carrots, beansprouts and spring onions.

~ a small joint of gammon waiting to be boiled into ham for the week's packed lunches. The bay leaf, parsley stalks, celery, onion and carrot are there to flavour the water which I froze in tubs labelled 'ham stock'. Fab soups in my future.

~ Breakfast toast with damson jelly (vintage September 2012).

~ Saturday night bolognese. Everyone's favourite.

~ Coffee cream cake before we demolished it.

~ Delicious honey-paprika grilled chicken. Took two days to clean my griddle after cooking this but it was so worth it. I will try and post the recipe soonish.

~ Last night's goat's cheese and leek galette. I had some leftover leeks in cheese sauce to use up so I made some shortcrust pastry, rolled it out into a rough circle, spread on the leeks and sauce, topped with discs of goat's cheese, turned the edges of the pastry up to stop it all leeking (ha ha) out. I finished it off by brushing the pastry with beaten egg and baking it in a hot oven for 30 minutes.

~ a carrot salad that seems to be ablaze. Excuse the smeary glass bowl.