Saturday night with the Windsors

It's been a while hasn't it. I've not written on Tonight's Menu since the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.  I had no idea how I was going to follow up the Olympic Food Challenge but it turns out that I didn't need a new challenge, all I needed was a rest.  I said all the way through the challenge that it was only one meal a day, but it was more than that.  It turned into an obsession for me and one that brought out some of my worst emotions.

It was my baby, my challenge* and I was determined that I would hold up my end of the bargain.  I would cook and blog my way through nineteen countries in nineteen days.  Of course I had the added challenge of collating the blog-posts of the other challengers.  There were days when I only received a handful of posts from the other bloggers.  I knew after a couple of days in that we were never going to manage all 204 countries.  That started playing on my mind and I may have started to get a bit snappy, I only hope I didn't step on any toes.

After the final reckoning we were about forty dishes short, so because it's my game, I have decided to extend the challenge so that the end date is now the closing ceremony of the Paralympics, which is on the 9th September.  Usual service may well have resumed long before then.

To wind down from the blog-athon we have come on Holiday to Windsor, Z's home town.  We were scheduled to visit during the Olympics for Z's folks 25th wedding anniversary, but, due to the rowing at Eton Dorney, Windsor was a traffic lock-down and we had to stay at home**.

We always eat well when we take a trip to Windsor and this week was no exception.  Over the course of our visit we had a sausage and pepper stew, a huge barbeque, salmon fishcakes, pasta with homemade roast pepper and tomato sauce and a buffet on the day that more of the family turned up.  The Thai inspired salmon fishcakes were so good that we will be cooking them once we are back home.


Thai salmon fishcakes with sweet potato chips and stirfried vegetables

As an extra treat, on Saturday, we all took the train into London for a mooch around Borough Market.  I had never been before.  I was like a child on the night before Christmas as we were waiting at the station.  Our journey wasn't just for the fun of it, we had a mission.  We were shopping for our evening meal, a meal to mark our hosts silver wedding anniversary.  I had heard about the large number of quality butchers but was staggered firstly at the huge range of fruit and vegetables and then at the price***.

In the end we chose wild boar steaks from Sillfield Farm, along with some of their bacon, sausages and blackpudding for our breakfast on Sunday.  I found ruby chard (one of my favourites) and romanesco (a vegetable that I had never eaten before) and we happily left The City for Windsor.  The steaks were pan fried and finished off in a low oven whilst the vegetables were simply cooked so that we could all taste them****.  The whole lot was served with a white wine, cream and mushroom sauce and boiled new potatoes.

Usually, I long for home by the time the end of a holiday comes along, but not this time.  The break has been wonderful, helped by glorious weather, great company and good food.  The break from a daily food blog has also been nice.  I will be back to daily updates soon, just not for a couple of days while I'm still in holiday mode.

*my precious.
**this was a very good thing. I couldn't have coped with trying to complete the OFC whilst being in somebody else's house.
***6 flat peaches for £2.00 when I pay £1.00 for 10 of them on Leeds Market!
****Z's folks hadn't had chard before.

Roast Pork Miso Soup

Our attempts at meal planning this week have not been a raring success.  Don't get me wrong, the meals we have cooked have all been great but they have not necessarily been the meals that we had planned to eat.  Today was no exception to this trend and I am happy to take full responsibility for the forced change of plan.

As it's the weekend and the weather wasn't too bad, I thought it would be nice for us to go out for lunch.  We wandered down to the Midnight Bell ready to tuck into some of their delicious sandwiches.  It wasn't until we got there that we remembered that it was Sunday and therefore only the Sunday menu was on offer.  It was a main meal or a dejected walk home so we sat down and ordered more food than we had bargained for.  I had fish and chips, Z had a chicken and mushroom pie and R had everything that was within his reach.  The food was really nice but it put the kibosh on roast pork with all the trimmings.

Unfortunately, we had already defrosted the joint of pork so we had to cook it, but there was no way that we were going to sit down to a second stomach-bursting meal in one day.  Instead we made a light miso broth with fresh vegetables, udon noodles and some of the roasted pork.  One of these days I'll plan a meal and actually cook it, but until then I'll just keep enjoying the food we cook.

Onion, Cheese and Chard Tart

I'm sure that I'm not the first person to point this out, but the onion really is underrated.  Nearly every dish we cook, curries, pasta sauces, stews, you name it, the onion has a starring role but it never gets any of the credit.  Tonight Z has settled the score with an onion, cheese and chard tart.  The reason Z is cooking an onion tart is a surfeit of onions. 

At fifty pence for a couple of pounds of them I was hardly going to say no.  The chard was the last of our crop from the front garden.  We have grown nowhere near enough chard this year but as the old saying goes, your garden is never as good as it will be next year.

To make the filling for the tart, Z slowly sweated three onions in olive oil and butter until they were soft before adding the chopped chard stems.  These take a little longer to cook than the leaves which cook in next to no time so they were just stirred through the onion and stalk mixture as it cooled.  Other than salt and pepper the only addition to the naturally sweet mixture was lemon thyme.

Once cool, the onions and chard were spread over a sheet of rolled out puff pastry* and then covered with cheese.  We happened to have in a few ends of cheeses so four different types were used on our tart, but as long as you have a decent melting cheese any will do.  By the time the tart had baked and the sides had risen, a miracle had occurred, the sky had cleared and the sun was out. A perfect summer's evening for a perfect summer meal.

*shop bought. I know that this will outrage some people but there are some things that are worthy of shortcuts and puff pastry is one of them

Hoi Sin Pork with Chard

Since I have been covering the evening shift at work, we have tried to plan our weeks meals well in advance.  The theory is that Z won't have to get in from work, deal with R and then try to come up with a delicious meal for the two of us, cook it and then have to deal with a grumpy, tired me, when I finally get home.  The theory is sound but there are always gaps.

The main gap today was the lack of noodles in the house.  We needed noodles because we had had rice last night and we don't like to repeat carbs.  So, this morning I headed into Leeds and purchased a bag of my favourite noodles from a little shop on Kirkgate Market.  There is no branding on the bag so I can't tell you what to look out for, other than unmarked bags of yolk yellow noodles.  They keep their texture so much better than any noodles I have bought from any other shop.

For the evening meal, Z sliced and marinated a pork loin steak in hoi sin sauce.  She then sliced an onion, some chard and a few mushrooms.  The whole lot took no time to cook.  The chard cooks the same as pak choi but is sweeter and less mustardy so is added right at the end of cooking.  While I was shopping, I also bought cheese for tomorrow night.  I can't attend Homage2Fromage tomorrow night so I'll be eating along at home.  I'd tell you what I'd bought, but I've been sworn to secrecy.

Pasta with Chard

Technically we are the proud tenders of an allotment and a vegetable garden.  We almost lost the allotment last year due to the weeds outnumbering the plants in a staggering fashion.  Previously we had managed to convince ourselves that we were keeping an area of the plot "wild" to encourage friendly insects, but it had got out of hand.

Our plot is now being tended by a couple of Z's colleagues.  Next year R will be big enough to cause all kinds of mischief on the plot and we'll pick up our trowels again.  To keep us in the habit of eating our own we converted the front garden into a veg patch.  It is little more than 2m by 3m but last year it kept us in salad leaves and runner beans for the summer. This year we have managed to plant nothing.  All that we now have growing is the rekindled rocket and Swiss Chard that we planted this time last year.

The rocket has turned up in a few meals already but the chard has just come into its own.  I really love chard, it may well be my favourite vegetable.  Two veggies for the price of one.  The tender leaves that cook like spinach and the thick stems, which have a slightly beetrooty, earthy sweetness to them.

For tonight's menu I simply fried the stems in olive oil with some garlic, anchovies and dried chilli.  Once cooked, but still with a bite, I added some cooked pasta, the shredded leaves and a handful of parmesan and after a brief stir the meal was cooked and served.  As quick evening meals go this is one of the tastiest.  Sadly, there isn't much chard in the garden, but we'll eke it out to make sure we can have some again this year.