Chicken stew

M cooked today! (I am checking whether there's a blue moon outside.) Ok, there is an actual valid reason for this. Its my birthday and she decided to cook dinner for me as a gift.



Once upon a time, in our nottingham days, when we were still young and she, particularly carefree as she was a student then, she was a better cook than me. And this chicken stew with dumplings is what she used to prove her point then. That and her magnificient mushroom soup. So it is nostalgic for me to have this again. It has been 6 years since she has last cooked a proper meal for me. Hopefully,it doesn't take another six years for her to cook next as she is actually still pretty good at it.

Fish! Borough Market

Its back to Borough Market again. Its my birthday today and M decided that we should go to one place in London where we will both enjoy ourselves rather than go to yet another designer warehouse sale where I will be left bored and cranky in a corner, kicking at dust bunnies.



So we spent the afternoon browsing through the wares at the stalls. We bought more escargots, eggs fresh vegetables, onion bread and extremely expensive French cakes picked out by the extravagant one herself. There's really so much here for foodies, olive oil, wine, truffles, cheeses, organic juices, fresh pasta, tofu and meats everywhere. Its one place I will definitely bring my parents to when they visit me.



For lunch, I wanted to try out this fish and chips stall I saw at the corner of the market. On closer scrutiny, I realised that they had a restaurant next to it, serving seafood. (what else?) And being in "I don't feel like walking around and eating my food" mood, M and I decided to try the food there. As you can see from the picture above, the restaurant is called Fish! Borough Market.



M had the grilled scallops wrapped in pancetta on a roasted mushroom with salad and roasted cherry tomatoes. The scallops were fresh and well cooked with a strong grilled taste. I love that taste. (M: not bad.) The only problem with it was the price, an exorbitant 17 pounds but I guess that's the price you have to pay for scallops and M really loves scallops.



I ordered the fish and chips. The cod was competently cooked with a light batter. Nothing really special about it. It could do with a bit more salt and the fish, I suspect, wasn't that fresh as it had a slight fishy taste. The chips on the other hand, were excellent and you could tell (hopefully, I am right) that they were freshly cut. The best part of the meal was surprisingly the mushy peas. I am not a big fan of mushy peas but today, i finally found one that I really enjoyed. Savoury with a hint of lemon and mint. I don't mind going back here again just to try out the rest of its seafood dishes. I have this strong suspicion that the rest of their dishes are much better than their fish and chips

Summer tray baked salmon

M has to work overtime tonight and thats why salmon is on the dinner menu. (M doesn't like salmon, not even smoked salmon). This is another of Jamie Oliver's recipes, from Jamie's dinners to be precise. Cook some mixed vegetables, such as peas, beans, cauliflower and carrots for about 5 minutes. For me, I just used a packet of Bird's Eye frozen vegetables. Drain and place the vegetables in a baking tray. Add some butter, olive oil and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Mix well. Place the salmon steak, seasoned with salt and black pepper, on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle some dill and basil over the fish and vegetables and cook in the oven for around 10-15 minutes at 230 degrees.

Potato, rocket and cheese soup

I first had a bite of rocket/roquette at the No 5 Bistro in Bath with my parents and I have fallen in love with it ever since. I just love its peppery taste and the sensation of oils released onto your tongue when you chew on it. Sadly, M isn't a great fan of it and so I don't get to eat it that often. But there's one of M's rules that I managed to exploit which is that if she can't see the vegetable in its full solid glory, it is more likely than not that she is willing to eat it. And so the end result is this soup, potato, rocket and cheese soup where the rocket has been dissolved into. It tasted just like broccoli and stilton soup but thats probably because I chose to add cheese to the bbc recipe. We had it with Waitrose ciabatta. Wonderful dinner for a winter night.

Oyako-don

When I was rummaging through the dark recesses of my kichen cabinets, I came across a bottle of dashi that M's mother had left. Alarms bells started ringing when I saw the expiry date: 8/12/2006. I decided to use it immediately. So I went online to check out what I can do with the dashi and Oyako don was the answer. Its really simple and easy to prepare, especially suited for quick dinners since M is coming home late these days. As a preliminary note, each bowl of oyako don should be prepared individually. Mix 40ml of dashi with 60 ml of chicken stock and bring to the boil in a pan. Add in diced chicken and diced onions and simmer till the chicken is cooked. Add mushrooms and simmer for around 2 minutes. Add in some spring onions and pour in beaten egg. Cook accordingly depending on how cooked you want your egg to be and pour over some cooked japanese rice. Serve with japanese chilli powder.

And to think I used to make oyako don without the dashi sauce...

Chicken and butternut squash casserole

Praise to the Powers that be for the BBC food website! I am really running out of chicken recipes to cook but thank goodness, I managed to find something interesting to cook from it. That said, the recipe does seem strange. It would not normally occur to me to make use of butternut squash and red wine in the same dish. But it turned out alright. I wouldn't say that the taste was heavenly but it it was quite savoury; the mixture of red wine, chicken stock and butternut squash. [M: "quite good, quite good, the stock is quite good."]

Oh and I added mushrooms to make the meal a more balanced one.