Three Good Things - Three good meals

Since starting Tonight's Menu I have tried to steer clear of the weekly round up of meals style blog post.  The main reason behind this* is that it is "Tonight's Menu" not "This Week's Menu".  That aside, I have had good reason not to be writing this week, my Mum is visiting.  It may not sound like a good reason to you, but I like to spend time with my guests, especially family, rather than spending the evenings typing.

Luckily, a wonderful blog concept from the glorious Liz, who writes at Margot Barbara, may well have saved my blogging conundrum.  Three Good Things is a roundup of three things that Liz is grateful for over the space of a week.  As this blog is about my evening meals, here are the three best ones that I have cooked this week

Good Meal One - Harissa Baked Trout

The thing with Mum is that she is quite a fussy eater.  There are very few meals that are completely off the menu, apart from any form of cured pork.  Ham, gammon and bacon are all persona non grata when she visits**.  We are making progress with some of the other foibles, fish being one of them.  The problem with fish is the fiddly nature of them.  It is written that Mum will find a bone in every portion of fish she is served.  With this in mind, I took extra care to pinbone the trout fillets before applying some harissa paste and baking them in a tinfoil parcel.

I served the trout with couscous, roast peppers and cherry tomatoes.  By the time the fish had been flaked off the skin and mixed through the couscous Mum was more than happy.  As were Z and I as we love fish and don't eat it often enough.

Good Meal Two - Tuscan Bean Stew

With the drawing in of Autumn and the shortening of the days, I have already started thinking about comfort food.  One of my favourite and most comforting combinations is that of sausages and beans.  The combinations of flavours that you could use is only limited by your imagination and good taste.  We bought some Italian inspired sausages from Sainsbury's over the weekend and cooked those with onion, celery, borlotti and haricot beans in some pork stock for a couple of hours.  The stew was finished with green beans and spinach.

Good Meal Three - Gigot Chops

The third good meal was courtesy of Mum.  We had decided to have some lamb as Z, who can't stand the stuff, was out for the evening.  I pointed Mum in the direction of Kirkgate market, told her who my favourite butcher is, and left the rest to her.  I imagined a Barnsley chop or some shanks but Mum was on a mission.

Having found B & J Callard, she walked in and flummoxed the young butcher by asking for two Gigot Chops.  He didn't have a clue what she was after, but one of the more senior members of staff was there to help.  The Scottish gigot chop is what the English call a leg steak and although I will have eaten it in the past, years of living in England had let it pass from my memory.  It is easily my favourite cut of lamb.

So there we have it, three good things, three good meals, all completely different and all wonderfully tasty.

*other than my odd obsession with following unwritten rules that I have set myself.
**I have been known to smuggle bacon into dishes but once it is cooked down it acts more as a seasoning than an ingredient.

Olympic Food Challenge: Palestine - Okra Stew

Having survived my first attempt at cooking okra, a vegetable that up until that point I found abhorrent, I decided to keep going with my new discovery.  I had always found okra to be a slimy, slug-like vegetable and couldn't understand its appeal.  It turned out that if you look after it, it is really nice.

Tonight's recipe for the Olympic Food Challenge is called Bamee, an Okra Stew from Palestine.  Although if you take the time to read the recipe I hope you'll agree that it is a lamb stew with okra.  Lamb means that it is not just me being challenged tonight as lamb is Z's final hangover from her vegetarian past.

This is a very simple recipe and because of that the finished dish does have that authentic feel to it.  The lamb (we had some neck) was browned with an onion, some garlic and allspice, covered in water and left to cook for a couple of hours.  Sautéed okra, a tin of tomatoes and a bunch of coriander are then added for a further half an hours cooking.

I was wary as some of the okra tales I had received said that stewing was one of the reasons that it went slimy.  However, some of my advice on cooking okra paid off as there was no slime in sight.  We had the stew with some flatbreads to mop up the juices.  Palestine's two Paralympians will be hoping to mop up their opposition on Saturday as they take to the Olympic Stadium in the long jump and shot put.  I wish them good luck with their endeavours.  I can't see us cooking this again as the lamb was still too lamby and fiddly for Z.  If gold medals were awarded for effort alone she would have been top of the podium tonight.

Lamb Chops with Sautéed Potatoes

Tonight I'm home alone, well not actually alone as R is asleep upstairs.  Z, on the other hand, has gone to an engagement party in Leeds.  This has given me a fantastic and rare opportunity to cook and eat lamb.

When we first met, Z was vegetarian and I could just about make a cup-a-soup.   To say that things have changed is an understatement.  There has been an awful lot of water under many bridges in the last seventeen years, but one thing that hasn't changed is Z's dislike of lamb.  It is the only meat* that Z doesn't like.  The flavour and texture combine to put her off.  This is why, after over 200 posts, there has only been one other mention of lamb.

As I don't get to eat lamb that often I decided to keep it simple.  I fried the chops on both sides before letting them rest in the oven.  While they were resting, I sautéed some parboiled Anya potatoes in the pan that I had fried the lamb in, making sure that I lost none of the lamb's flavour.  I could eat this a couple of times a month and not get bored of it, so as a once in a blue moon treat, it was fantastic.

*apart from most offal items

Lambwors and chips

Z is having a well deserved pamper night at one of her friends' house.  This has given me carte blanche on what I'm eating this evening.  When we first met, way back in September 1995, Z was vegetarian.  Therefore my Z-not-at-home-meal was invariably steak and chips* just to redress the red meat balance.  These days, with Z's return to an omnivorous state, I can have steak whenever I like, within reason.

I now favour lamb when Z isn't around, or when I can find it on a decent restaurant menu.  This is because lamb is the last vestige of Z's vegetarianism, so we don't eat it that often.  In fact this is the first time I've eaten lamb since starting Tonight's Menu.

I bought the Lambwors on a recent trip to Leeds Kirkgate Market.  There is a cracking South African butcher on Butchers Row who I have bought boerewors from in the past.  I'm always intrigued by their ever increasing range so when I saw that they had started making a lamb version I was in.  Knowing that I'd be on eating them on my own I only bought a short length of sausage.  I then froze and forgot about them until today.

Being home alone for the evening I have let my foodie** pretensions slip.  There is something very satisfying about a huge pile of skinny chips, a large pile of dressed salad and some spicy meat.  To make sure I wasn't being a complete slob I knocked up a yoghurt and harissa dressing which was cooling and hot at the same time.

*assuming I had some cash, more often than not it would have been a shonky pasta dish but would have been craving steak.
**I really do not like the term foodie. I prefer the term "passionate about food" or "always hungry"