Rigatoni with Chicken and Pesto

In all fairness I could have written and posted tonight's menu by now.  We ate at 5:30ish so my excuse for the tardiness of my writing needs to be cast iron.  Fortunately I think I have a good reason.  Since Z weaned R onto solids he has been having his tea (supper) between 5 and 6 o'clock.  To my mind this is just too early so we have been eating after he is tucked up in bed.  So why change now?

Well, we're a traditional/old fashioned sort of family really.  We didn't actually discuss getting engaged.  I spoke to Z's parents, chose a ring and proposed on bended knee in Parc Guell, Barcelona.  Happily she said yes.  We got married a few years later in Z's church in Windsor and had a nice 80 person 3 course meal followed by an indie-disco.

A few years passed again and 16 months ago we were shocked by the arrival, two months early, of our son.  Things have been all topsy turvy ever since.  I'm not complaining, I have no right to.  R is a cracking little boy, he doesn't cry much, sleeps through the night and eats almost everything we put in front of him.  He can be a bit stress inducing at times, the few moments before meal and nap times mostly.  He has also knocked our routines, but we have got used to not eating until 9pm.

To continue our traditional/old fashioned path through life we have decided to get him Christened.  We both were* and it hasn't done us any harm.  To night we had the local Vicar coming around to discuss the formalities after R went to bed, so we all ate together.  I want family meals to be a daily occurrence, eventually, but closer to 6 or 7 would be better.  That wouldn't have fitted R's current timetable.

Fortunately, pasta dishes can be really quick to prepare, even quicker if you're using fresh pasta.  While I kept R entertained (or vice versa) Z fried chicken, garlic, mushrooms and tomatoes.  Pesto and cream cheese were added and tea was ready.  We got extra parmesan, R got yoghurt for dessert.

*although I now put Jedi on census returns

Pork Madras

As with all good roasts, yesterday's meal has left us with plenty of leftovers.  The question is what to do with them.  The vegetables and some of the pork will be turned into soup using the pork's cooking liquid, but that won't do an evening meal.

I decided that a curry was in order.  Unfortunately time was against me.  The three of us got in from work/nursery late and a huge pile of washing up needed to be seen to before I could even start cooking.  I enjoy cooking curries from scratch, I even grind my own garam massala but tonight wasn't the night.  Luckily we nearly always have a jar of curry paste in the fridge*.

An onion, a couple of peppers and a tin of tomatoes make up the bulk of the madras.  The pork is added towards the end of the simmering to heat through.  In the time it takes to cook basmati rice your curry is done, put the rice on once you're happy with the curry and you'll end up with a richer, deeper sauce.

NB.  We also had a couple of onion bahjis with tonight's menu.  These were leftovers from a buffet at work and I didn't want to see them binned.

*The jar of curry paste is normally held in reserve for marinades.

The Versatile Blogger Award

What's this? An award? Crikey!  I'm touched, I really am.  The last thing I won was a golf umbrella at a school fete and now Tonight's Menu has been awarded the Versatile Blogger Award (VBA).  Now I'm relatively new to all this blogging malarkey.  I'd never heard of VBA until Clare, the writer of Feast And Glory, nominated me so I decided to have bit of a dig to see what the craic is.

In a nutshell the VBA is a nod to those blogs that you enjoy reading and would like to tell the readers of your blog about.  It's really nice to have been nominated, of course I look at the stats to see how many people are reading about my evening meals but that's not why I'm doing it.  I started writing just to see if I could.

I'd already been posting my meal plans on Twitter and Facebook so blogging felt like the right next step.  The one snag is my inability to spell and my poor grasp of grammar.  I scraped through my English GCSE's by rewriting several essays.  And only just managed to pull together the minimum word count for my dissertation at Uni.  I read and talk a lot but writing has always been a barrier.

Luckily Z is very encouraging and is always willing to proof read before I publish.  Tonight's menu would be a mess, littered with triping errors and smelling mistakes without her.

Back to the award.  The VBA comes with a set of conditions which are:

1. You have to display the award with pride on your blog.
2. You have to thank those who nominated you.
3. You have to disclose seven random facts about yourself.
4. You have to nominate fifteen blogs to pass the nomination on to.

 So without further ado I'll crack on.

You have to display the award with pride on your blog.

You have to thank those who nominated you.

Thank you Clare, author of Feast and Glory.

You have to disclose seven random facts about yourself.

1. My first pet was a goldfish called Addlington (won at Addlington Fair)
2. My current favourite cheese is Stilton
3. I own, but cannot play, a Flying-V Ukelele
4. I am Treasurer for Beeston Festival
5. I achieved Level 5 BAGA proficiency award for Gymnastics
6. I prefer Rugby Union to Rugby League
7. I have never loved Elvis

You have to nominate fifteen blogs to pass the nomination on to.

I've struggled with this I'm afraid to say.  I don't read that many blogs regularly and I don't want to trawl the internet and pass the award onto blogs that I wouldn't actually read, never mind like.  So I have decided to cheat and just pass the VBA onto the following blogs, ones that I read and enjoy, for now;

Food and biscuits
How not to do a food blog
How to be a dad
I don't just make soup
Project photo doodle
SLAB
South Leeds life
The space between panels

I will keep the remaining nominations and update the list as soon as possible.

Boiled Pork Hock

So I did it again, I can't help myself.  We had already decided on our Sunday Dinner before I went to Kirkgate Market for fruit and vegetables.  I returned home with said veggies and two pork hocks.  Instantly changing our meal plans and also knocking one of the weekend's jobs for six.

We had planned Roast Chicken with all the trimmings.  Substituting one meat for another was no hardship and the trimmings remained the same.  We had also planned to replenish our stock of stock.  We make stock in large batches and then freeze it in more useful amounts.  The problem was that I now needed to use the stock pan for the pork.

After a good three hours of gentle cooking the meat fell from the bone and nestled onto the plates next to spuds, roasted in duck fat, carrots and broccoli.  We're going to be eating more meals as a family as @Baby_Rhys grows up.  He already prefers the food on our plates that what is in front of him, even though it's the same food.  Sunday lunch is the perfect family around the table meal, it's the one meal that most families aim to have together.  I hope that we eat together as a family much more often than once a week. Only the future will tell.

Pizza and Party Snacks

Since the arrival of our bundle of joy we haven't been the party animals we once were.  We were never into the club scene.  We were habitual pub/bar bunnies and as such we found Leeds to our liking.  No matter what mood you're in Leeds has a bar for you.  Cosy and intimate, wacky and off the wall, dark and brooding, you name it, it's out there.

We were also in the habit of hosting and attending random house parties.  These were not just a group of mates hanging around a kitchen*, they were always themed and fancy dress wasn't optional. We are to this day the proud owners of a fancy dress cupboard that is still being added to.  Tonight we managed to arrange a baby-sitter so we could once again don a costume and make merry.

The party itself is a house warming party, pretty standard reason for having people around for drinks and nibbles.  The hostess is renound for coming up with imaginative themes for her parties and tonight is no different.  Anybody ever been to a Rubik's Cube party?  Neither had I.  The idea was to arrive wearing the six colours of the 80's puzzle and over the course of the night swap clothing so that you are wearing just one colour.

No party is complete without a table bulging with snacks to soak up the booze.  Because we are out of practice Z and I shared a pizza before we set out.  We needn't have bothered as there was plenty to go around, including more pizza, but not too much to stop the twister championships.

*All house parties end up in the kitchen, its the law, tradition or an old charter or something.

Friday Night Take-away - King Prawns in Black Bean Sauce

This week saw the start of the Chinese Year of the Dragon and as Z is a dragon*, I though it only fair that she could choose tonight's menu.  As luck would have it she has chosen a Chinese dish for our Friday night take-away.

A simple stir fry of prawns and baby vegetables in black bean sauce with noodles.  Good food doesn't get much quicker.  Unfortunately the food miles on the veg stick in the throat.  I'd prefer to eat locally and seasonally whenever possible.  In a toss up between organic veg from Peru and its equivalent non-organically grown plant from around the corner I'll have the local one thanks.

The reason that we have baby corn and sugar snap peas in the house at all, boils down to yet another food preference.  I hate the idea of good food going to waste, especially if it has travelled from the other side of the world.  So when we saw the packet, reduced for a quick sale, we bought it.

Looking back at this week's meals we have eaten a lot of different vegetables, a fair proportion of which have been in season and at their best right now.  As with all things foody, balance is the key, so I won't be racked with guilt over my stir fry veg for too long.


*now I'm for it.

Mushroom Risotto

It turns out that mushroom risotto was the fourth menu I posted here on Tonight's Menu way back on the 21st November 2011.  Those were innocent times, I hadn't started labelling the posts so if you click on "mushroom" below you simply won't find it.  I've decided not to go back and label the early posts and to leave them as they are.

I have also realised that I am cooking mushroom risotto tonight for the same reason as I cooked it two months ago.  It's that "what are we going to do with..." scenario.  I suppose I should broaden my mushroom horizons and cook something else, but that's not who I am.  This blog is not meant to be a test of my ingenuity when it comes to cooking.  It doesn't even contain recipes*.

The bottom line is I really, really like risotto.  So I'm surprised that this hasn't happened sooner and amazed that two months have passed since I last had mushroom risotto.  If you choose to go back and peek at the previous risotto you'll get a glimpse into my risottophilia.  I have it bad.

Along with mushrooms, tonight's risotto has leeks substituting for onions and a fair amount of thyme.  Everything else is standard risotto fare.  Arborio rice, wine, stock and patience.  Finished with butter and parmesan cheese.  I wonder how long it will be until the next risotto comes along.

*sometimes it contains recipes.