Haloumi Salad with Dolmades and Pork Koftas: Getting a Lot off My Plate.

On the 18th November 2011 I wrote a blog.  There is nothing unusual in that, I am after all the owner and writer of five blogs.  Back then however I was a fledgling food blogger and Friday Night Take-Away was my first attempt at writing a blog post.  I had been a keen home cook for years and had been sharing my evening meals on social media with positive feedback.  People seemed interested in what I was cooking so writing about it felt like the right thing to do.

I'll be honest, that post isn't great.  The food was*, but the writing and the photograph leave a lot to be desired.  But I was on a learning curve.  I was primarily using Tonight's Menu as a tool to improve my written English skills and, over time, I think I have succeeded in that.

My original plan was to keep Tonight's Menu as a daily diary of our evening meals.  Not a recipe resource full of weights and measures, no step by step guide to cooking.  I wanted to write the story behind the food, the reason behind the meals we chose to cook.  Within a couple of weeks I found myself in a pub for my evening meal and I decided there and then that TM wasn't going to be a review blog either.  I love food and I'm quite opinionated, but who am I to judge what/how others are cooking.  I also applied this rationale to occasions when I was eating in my friends' and family's houses too, writing about the visit and the meal without feeling the need to rate anything out of 10.

This went well until I was approached to do a review for an American Diner in Leeds.  I was about to turn down the opportunity when the call of the freebie got the better of me.  That post, written in April 2012, is still the most read thing I have ever written and sadly I don't think it will ever be surpassed.  I have since accepted and written a scant hand-full of other freebie reviews, but they are not what I've been happiest writing.

I've been at my happiest when I've been thinking up and running random food challenges.  The Olympic Food Challenge, World Cup Food Challenge, and Everything But the Oink have allowed me to stretch my culinary muscle, try even more new ingredients and, to a lesser extent, boss about a glut** of food bloggers; a group of people I'm happy to call friends.

"But why are you telling us this?" I hear you cry.  Well I've decided to call it a day, give it a rest.  It's time for this old warhorse to be put out to pasture.  Time pressures and other activities mean that I just don't have the time for writing, even though it is still something that I really enjoy.  But I'm not going to drop Tonight's Menu like a hot potato.  I want to leave it as something that I'll feel proud of.

I've said for a long time that I don't have a bucket list of food that I want to eat before I die.  I do however have unfinished business with some of my food challenges and there are some dishes that I'm desperate to share with you.  So from now on every post will be one step closer to the end of Tonight's Menu.  There are going to be more endings than in Return of The King.  And at the end of it all there will be room for a little more...

For the record, Tonight's Menu was a Mediterranean meze including grilled haloumi salad, pork koftas, and dolmades.  Very nice it was too.

*I think, it's been a while.
**or whatever the collective noun for food bloggers is.

Warm Pigeon and Beetroot Salad

Regular visitors here and to my other blog, Everything but the Oink, will know that I have an ongoing relationship with Swillington Farm.  I have been a purchaser of their organic meat and vegetables for some time and I recently sponsored one of their pigs.   We have been visiting the farm every couple of weeks to visit Breakfast*, to check on his progress and pick up some treats from the farm shop.  We recently got our first ever double yolker from one of their hens which had us both giddy with excitement!

We last visited Swillington on 9th June for Open Farm Sunday.  As well as seeing how Breakfast was getting on, we could tour the whole farm, visiting the bees, sheep and cattle.  We also wandered through the woods past Cockpit Round** and found the old Ice House.  As well as the animals there was one thing that stood out on our tour of the farm. 

Everywhere you looked there were signs reminding you that Swillington Farm, the walled garden, the fishing ponds, Ice House Woods, Cockpit Round, Breakfast's pen, are all scheduled for destruction. The High Speed 2 rail link to London will run right through the heart of Swillington destroying everything that Jo and her family have worked hard to create.  I'm all in favour of building to boost the economy but I am yet to see a business case or argument that has convinced me that HS2 is a good idea.  The fact that Swillington is affected just makes it worse.

That said, the signs of things that are not yet certain to come didn't stop us having a great day.  I'm told that this was the best Open Farm Sunday that Swillington have hosted, with more visitors than ever finding out where their food comes from and how it is raised/grown.  We couldn't leave the farm without visiting the shop on our way out and, for a change, we bought a pack of pigeon breasts rather than pork, beef or lamb.

We've had a whole pigeon in one of the meat boxes that we had delivered from Swillington in the past.  It's one of my favourite game birds, but one pigeon does not really feed two people***.  The packet of four pigeon breasts for £3.00 was a much better find for us.  A simple warm salad of fried pigeon, sautéed beetroot and the first of the salad leaves from the back garden, was a perfect summer's evening meal.  It was also a great way to round off a glorious weekend. 

*Yes I have named my pig Breakfast, you can read all about him at Everything but the Oink.
**so named because cock fighting to place there after it was made illegal in 1863.
***not when they are as hungry as we are.

Tuna Nicoise Salad

Today was the first day of this year's Leeds Waterfront Festival, a couple of days of activities along the Aire as it passes through the city centre.  With Z's mum visiting and a toddler to entertain it seemed rude not to pop along for a nosey.  We had planned on getting to Granary Wharf in time for lunch but, somehow, we managed to get out of the house in good time so we arrived just after eleven when things were just getting set up.

R enjoyed toddling around the place and was fascinated by the boats and stilt walker but we can only keep him in one area for so long as he tends to get bored*.  We wandered along the waterfront taking in a classic French car display, craft market and boule demonstration before getting to Clarence Dock where the main event of the day was taking place, the Dragon Boat Races.  I don't know if it's the fancy dress, the overall excitement of the races or the fact that the theme from Hawaii Five-o is played during each race, but I love the whole spectacle.

After a couple of races, including the inevitable Pirates verses Vikings race, we needed lunch and so made our way back along the waterfront to Brewery Wharf, where we stopped off at Azucar for tapas.  Never having eaten there before I asked the waitress about portion size and she suggested two to three items from the menu each would be plenty.  She wasn't wrong.  For the three of us, plus R, we ordered seven items and we couldn't finish all of them.  There is clearly a huge difference between Spanish tapas and Yorkshire tapas.

For the record we ordered; calamares, croquetas de bacalao, chorizo al vino, jalapos, tortilla espanola, huevos rotos and patatas bravas.  The food was good, not that expensive and it came out fast, which is always a bonus if you are ever out eating with R.  With hindsight we needn't have ordered the huevos rotos.  They were nice but unnecessary.  We were then faced with a dilemma.  We had decided, before leaving the house, that we would choose what to cook for the evening meal after eating lunch.  With such a varied meal behind us we were scratching our heads a little.

A quick tour around Kirkgate market, forced partly by the need to get out of the rain, gave us the inspiration we needed.  With such a large lunch, all three of us wanted a salad and with green beans, free range eggs and fantastic tuna all available, a nicoise salad made perfect sense.  I won't try to teach you how to boil an egg.  I won't describe the process of searing raw tuna.  I'm not going to tell you what dressing to pour over the salad, which should include green beans, tomatoes and olives.  I will suggest in the strongest terms that you give this a go.  Fresh tuna is as far away from tinned tuna as you can get.  It is not cheap but it is fantastic.

*I can't imagine where he gets that from.

Ham and Egg Salad

After a week away from home it's always nice to get back to your own kitchen.  Firstly, have you ever tried to make a cup of tea in somebody else's house?  Nothing is where it should be*, spoons and mugs are all hidden and only Indiana Jones could retrieve the teabags.  This is what we have returned home to.

Our holiday was brought on due to having the entire ground floor of our house sanded last week.  It was just going to be easier not to be around the sawdust or having to live in a varnish fume filled house.  So we packed up the living room and kitchen, removed all furniture and fittings and high-tailed it to Edinburgh.  We had a great week, visiting relatives, going to the zoo* and eating ice cream on the beach in March!

But now we are back home everything is in disarray.  We don't even have a fridge to keep milk in never mind not having any milk.  Arriving home on Sunday brings with it the added problem of Sunday trading hours.  I had half an hour to run to the supermarket and buy the essentials.  After the obligatory motorway service station burger we decided on a salad for tonight's menu.

We always have jars of olives and artichokes so all I needed to buy was some leaves and we were already on to a decent meal.  I bought some nice parma ham and a decent loaf of bread and Z poached a couple of eggs.  A quick healthy meal was just what we needed after a week of excess. Now to put the house back together.

*apart from the milk, that is 99.9% of the time in the fridge.
** these are two unrelated events.

Beetroot and Goat's Cheese Salad

We had a lovely day today wandering around Local4Lent, a food and craft event that took place in Leeds Corn Exchange.  We always go to these events looking for inspiration for our evening meal and today was no exception.  The deciding factor for Tonight's Menu however, was not found on the food stalls, but was decided upon after stopping for lunch and possibly over-eating, a bit.

We went to The White Swan, next to The City Varieties for lunch, as we knew it was baby friendly.  Rather than choosing sandwiches or something from their light bites menu we ended up with burgers*, which might not have been the best idea as we were stuffed by the time we had finished.

We decided that a salad and some nice bread was the only thing that we all wanted after the large lunch, and as we were in the Corn Exchange anyway,  I popped to Anthony's Fromagerie and Bakery for bread and cheese.  I have an admission to make at this point, I can't for the life of me remember the name for the cheese that I bought.  I know it was a British goat's cheese and I know I'd recognise it if I found it again but that's about all I can tell you.

To go with the cheese, I roasted some beetroot, crushed some walnuts and made a dressing using pumpkin oil.  The salad leaves included some rocket from our front garden which has bounced back from last year in all of this unseasonally nice weather.

For desert, Z and her Mum had brownies from #brownies which they bought at Local4Lent.  Washed down with chocolate wine.  I don't have much of a sweet tooth so I didn't partake, but I'm told they were great.

*I had the falafel burger which was brilliant!