BBQ lamb chops

A lamb loin chop, cooked over charcoal (or better yet, wood) is one of the most delicious things in the world. Look at the colour on that meat! It looks like it has been glazed (or photo-shopped) but that lovely reddish tinge is the colour it goes when you put the lid on to slow the cooking and it absorbs the smoke.

Aubergine has such an affinity for lamb (a dollop of smoky baba ganoush on a piece of grilled lamb is very close to heaven) and for barbecuing, so I split one in half, cut some slits into it but not all the way through, and marinated it for about 5 minutes in olive oil, lemon juice and garlic before putting it on the grill quite some time before the meat. Some halved courgettes got the same treatment (we are in training - we've got 5 courgette plants in the garden this summer, so the more delicious ways with them that we master, the better).

A bit of salad - with some really perfect avocado in it - and there you have one of the tastes of summer. Being able to sit out in short sleeves and bare feet was just the icing on the cake.

Asparagus Risotto

I made an asparagus risotto for tea last night and it was the best I have made, I think! It's not low-carb, clearly, but yesterday was a bank holiday long weekend so I extended my "not following the diet" a bit.

After the usual onion/butter/carnaroli/white wine phase, my first addition of stock was a bit of leftover garlicky saffrony broth from my pollo al ajillo of a few weeks back, that I've had stashed in the freezer. Then additions of plain chicken stock (a rather good one I made on Saturday). After a couple of additions of stock I added the stems of the asparagus, peeled and cut into 1" lengths. When the rice was just about done I added what I think is called a mantecato, a bit of extra butter and some grated parmesan, seasoned with white pepper, then poured the risotto into deep plates, with a disk of soft, mild goats' cheese in each. Garnished with the asparagus spears, boiled separately. The garlic saffron broth added an extra dimension that I don't think I will be able to replicate easily, and the fresh, fat, local asparagus was just divine.

Chakchouka baked eggs

Yeah - sorry, more eggs. As part of the whole weightloss, improved diet lifestyle, we're having a go at having fish once a week (WITHOUT added chorizo!) and a vegetarian meal once a week. We go through these phases.

So tonight we had chakchouka baked eggs - a variation on a dish I ate a lot when I was living in a flat I couldn't really afford. Tonight we had the the deluxe version... It's pretty similar to this but I added some bits. And if you are ever in Sydney, get yourself to Cafe Mint on Crown St for breakfast. Order - I insist - the spicy lamb mince with hummus & za-atar toast, and a side order of chakchouka. It will be the biggest breakfast you've eaten, but it is the most delicious thing ever served on a Saturday morning.

Anyhoo - for the recipe:

Chakchouka Baked Eggs (for 2)

Saute a large, sliced onion in olive oil in a heavy-based pan until translucent. Add 1tsp cumin seeds and 1 tsp lightly crushed coriander seeds and continue to saute until the onion is getting quite floppy. Add 3 chopped cloves of garlic, 1/2 tsp hot smoked paprika and 2 dried chillies, then 3 sliced peppers (any combination of peppers but not all green - that would be bitter and I suspect quite icky). When the peppers start to soften add a tin of chopped tomatoes and some salt and quite a lot of pepper. When the mixture comes to a simmer, crack 3 eggs into it (or 2 or 4 - I do 3 because I want 1 and my husband wants 2). Crumble a block of feta over the top and leave to simmer until the eggs are cooked and the feta has begun to melt.

The other thing I did was top it with courgette crisps for some extra veg and a bit of contrast. Slice your courgettes quite thinly, toss them in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and salt and pepper, spread on a baking sheet and bake at 180-200C for 15-20 minutes or until browned but not black. Takes some watching. I usually do these to sprinkle over a courgette risotto for a texture contrast.

Chilean wine dinner

The pub had another wine dinner last night. I have come to the conclusion that they shouldn't try to theme the food to the wine, because they get a bit tangled up. I don't know anything about Chilean food, but I do know that the menu last night was a bit odd, and certainly not as nicely presented or cooked as their normal dishes.

To start with - Jerusalem Artichoke Soup. I don't think it was. For one thing, I haven't seen a Jerusalem Artichoke in the shops for weeks, and for another, Jerusalem Artichokes puree so very beautifully that I don't think you could achieve the effect of a clear green liquid with pulverised little hard vegetable bits. My clinching argument is that they are, how should I put it? A very windy vegetable and this soup certainly did not produce the usual effect. It was over-seasoned with black pepper and not a lot of other flavour. The wine was a heavenly 2006 sauvignon blanc which made the soup look better than it was.

The next course was a fairly large portion of very rich, very delicious seafood baked in creamy, cheesy sauce. It had nice chunky pieces of crayfish, mussels and squid, slices of sweet, soft onion and this lovely sauce, which all went very well with a very good chardonnay. And it isn't often that I use the words "very good chardonnay"!

The main course was described as "beef and corn pie". When it arrived it was a casserole of mince with sweetcorn kernels, sultanas and slices of hardboiled egg, served with some rice. One of my companions doesn't eat egg, so she sent hers back and had the vegetarian option, which was described as "tomato and lima bean stew" - which turned out to be a thick vegetable sauce enclosed in a folded wheat tortilla. The beef was tasty, if not at all what I pictured, and went well with the lovely fruity carmenere.

They called the pudding turron del vino - wine and almond nougat. When I think of nougat I think of the white sweet with chunks of nuts through it, wrapped in rice paper. What arrived was a glass with a layer of a sweet, loose almond paste, broken up with flaked almonds, topped by a strawberry puree and a generous amount of whipped cream. It was very nice (but a similar texture to the dish they called "blancmange" at the Sicilian dinner). The wine was fantastic. A 2007 viognier, it stood up to the sweet fruityness much better than I ever would have imagined.

So dinner was pretty good, all things considered, but I just feel that if they hadn't tried to do Chilean food they would probably have been better.

Liver & onions

It's rainy and grim and despite all of the blossom on the trees (we think we have an apple tree in the bottom of the garden), it has been feeling wintry again.

So - a warming dish of liver and bacon. Served in a smaller portion than usual to fit the diet, with just a pile of greens instead of anything starchy. The asparagus is Spanish though... disappointingly, Waitrose had sold out of the British stuff by the time we got there.

Fry a sliced onion in a spot of olive oil until it is collapsing. Add some lardons of bacon and whole button mushrooms. When you have a good sizzle on, and the onions are really properly cooked but before they start to crisp, add your slices of liver. When they are almost cooked, add a splash of sherry or port or something. Swirl around the pan and onto the plates. Yum!

Eggs

I'm sure it will come as no surprise, but I eat quite a lot. And as a result, I weigh quite a lot. So in the run up to turning 35, I have decided it is time to shift a few kilos. In the past I have been quite successful on the Healthy Inspirations program, so I am back on that. This program begins with a 3 day "Healthy Quick Start" which is lots of protein and green veg and not much of anything else, which apparently prepares your body for weightloss.

I wasn't entirely organised to begin my Quick Start yesterday, so I fell back to plain boiled eggs for my breakfast. I do love a boiled egg, although it was something of a tragedy not to have buttered sourdough toast soldiers to dunk in them. These are Clarence Court eggs. We'd usually get the Old Cotswold Legbar ones, which have lovely pastel blue and green shells, but Waitrose were out last week so we got these rather magnificent Burford Browns. Such a lovely rich colour, both of the shell and the yolk.

Today I was better prepared, and made eggs and asparagus for lunch, to celebrate the start of the British asparagus season. The asparagus was so delicious! Even if you aren't bothered about your carbon footprint, or food miles, I have to say the flavour and texture of fresh, local asparagus is so superior I wouldn't buy Peruvian again. I will just been eating as much British asparagus as I can afford for the 8 weeks of the season. I wrapped a bit of proscuitto around my husband's asparagus, but "deli meat" is off the menu for me. A slick of hollandaise sauce would have been perfect, but as I am only allowed 2 eggs a day on this bit of the programme, I had to prioritise. Maybe next weekend.

The benefit of hindsight

Food memories make fools of us all. That is the hypothesis I have come to after many bloody awful curries in Britain. I now believe that the nostalgic Poms who wail about the delicacy and savour of a British curry are having the same sort of perverse flashback that leads me to think fondly of scrambled eggs sprinkled with sugar. Which were great, I swear.

So I was a bit worried when I decided that I really, really liked our new local Thai place. Was it genuinely good, or was I just addled after 2 years of sweet gloopy sauces clinging to the roof of my mouth? We took some friends, recently arrived from Sydney and well-travelled in Asia, and they pronounced that yes, it has the freshness, vibrancy and balance that we expect from good Thai food in Sydney.

That's all right then.

Tonight I had lovely limey, fish-saucey tom yum gung as a starter, with lots of lemon grass and kaffir lime leaf and galangal (handy hint - Thais eat with spoon and fork, so if something is cut bigger than the spoon, it is a flavouring that you aren't expected to eat) and then a grilled beef salad. My salad was delicious - lovely tender meat, crisp vegetables, balanced dressing. But I consider it a mark of the superior levels of hospitality in Thai culture that 2 different waitresses were very upset that I left slices of chilli on the side of my plate. They swore that they would tell the chef that his food was too hot. I hope I was firm enough in telling them absolutely not to, that the flavour the chilli gave was just perfect but that I can't eat that many slices of tiny, incendiary birdseye chillis. Because honestly, I will be crushed if we go back and they have dumbed it down to yet another sweet, gloopy sauce.