Family Meals- Week commencing 22 January 2023

Sunday Roast at The Coast. How much we love The Coast. Always reliable. Always friendly. Lovely atmosphere. This is our local and how much gratitude do we have that we can wander down and have any sort of meal pretty much whenever we wish.

Monday supper

Chicken and vegetable soup using chicken from Christmas dinner (frozen), tinned carrots, onions, pasta and broccoli. Plus garlic bread.

It was Australia Day this week.

It is hard to recreate the fairly typical Australia day food of BBQ in a cold, wet grey English winter but I made a fairly decent stab.

potato salad; prawn and pasta salad; bbq chicken drumstick and half a burger.

Summer holidays Days 1 and 2

You can;’t tell from this picture but it is raining. It is also Saturday and the first day of a week off. The last 3 months – nearly 4- have been dreadful. Work has been insanely busy. Working from home while juggling home schooling and conference calls has been just crazy. I do not think I have NOT worked through the weekend in months. So a week off is sorely needed. I put in a 14 hour day yesterday to get myself into a posiiton where I could take the week off and so i have started the day exhausted.

Obviously we are not going away. The plan for this year was a trip to Cyprus, but then Covid got in the way. Now, just the thought if a week of quiet and hopefully sun will be blissful. I am hatching a hopeful plan for camping later in the summer.

The photo above is taken out our upstairs window. The tree is a magnolia and it is beautiful.

With this breakfast I was pretending we were in Greece. Hearty brown bread. fresh tomatoes, deli meats, fruit and Ayvar which is a spicy red pepper compote which was a staple for us when we lived in the Balkans. It is lovely smeared on bread, used as a dip or stirred through hot pasta. I love it with bread. It is very addictive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajvar

We tried to get to Ventnor botanic gardens today but it was crazy busy. We stood in a line that was not moving for 15 minutes before giving up and ehading to Chale. Pubs are opened in a socially distanced way, and if there is a pub with greater outdoor space than the Wight Mouse then I have not come across it.

Masks as required. Sunglasses courtesy a free gift from a Minecraft magazine.

Chicken burger

 

 

Saturday

The shops are starting to come to life in Cowes. I bought this lovely bag and flowers from Rosalies.

The day began with an early morning walk through Northwood cemetery. I was looking for the headstones of the people who first lived in our old Victorian house. I was very pleased to find them. The last of the family died not too long after World War II so the graves were bare and long forgotten, although the cemetery is cared for truly beautifully by an army of committed volunteers. Baby-G and I decided we will bring some flowers next time.

The day started dreary and ended up warm and sunny. I roasted a chicken and made Salat Olivier – one of my favourite Russian salads. Potato salad with cooked carrots, peas, chopped boiled eggs and pickjled cucumbers. Husband-G was eating it as well so I omitted the smoked sausage I would usually put in. We had this with coleslaw and a tomato I sliced up and stacked with a herbed cream cheese. H-G had a jackfruit burger with his.

https://www.instagram.com/rosaliesofcowes/

 

 

Easy supper

It’s a week night. It is cold, damp and grey. (In England. Who would have thought…..). I was coming down with a cold that would worsen with a vengeance overnight and see me at home the next day. My energy was AWOL and so H-G was tasked with heading to the Deli counter at the market and purchasing something nourishing, something delicious and something ever so slightly indulgent.

All I had to do was set the table and pick out my preferred tableware.

I went for my fun melamine healthy eating plates. These plates are meant to be a guide to portion control and I love using them (if not necessarily adhering to their template). I tipped out gorgeously coloured little packs of Greek salad and beetroot, apple and yoghurt salad.

Then added the meat and starch.

Maybe a little too much starch in the form of chunky chips … but beef patties, chips, salads and English mustard….. easy. No fuss. Popular with all the family (vegetable patties were the order of the day for the vegetarians amongst us).

Less than an hour later the entire household was in bed…. while the wind howled outside and the creeping cold crept upon us.

Winter is here.

Burgers and fries

Because sometimes you just need a burger.

Portobello mushrooms, pumpkin seed butter, mustard, egg-free mayo,  lettuce and tomato with (frozen) chips.

Cowes Week Day 4. The Waterside.

Lunch today was good old pub grub at The Waterside. This was good value for money. The food was tasty, serviceable. Did the job. Not great food I would say, but decent, filling and the portions were ridiculously large.

Children’s fish fingers, served with beans or chips, or peas or potato faces. £4.50 including  a free drink.

Beans and Chips. £3.29.

Beer and Burger meal deal. £6.29

Chips and gravy. £ 3.39

Mix and Match Fish cakes -smoked haddock; thai cod and prawn and salmon and dill fish cakes. £6.59

beer and Burger – vegetable burger. A tasty patty filled with carrots, potato, corn and peas. When loaded with mayo, sauce and salad this was very tasty indeed. £6.29

A local barbershop quartet serenaded the High Street.

http://www.wight-harmony.org.uk/index.htm

‘Children’s Meals’ – Vegetable patties

I am not a big fan of the concept of ‘children’s meals’ as opposed to meals that everyone can eat, but B-G is being a vegetable-refuser lately. Unless it is baked beans or potatoes, it seems that a vegetable will not pass his lips… which is giving me the ‘opportunity’ [hmm] to experiment with a number of ways in which to get lovely vegetable goodness down him.

So today I made vegetable patties. I simply cooked potato, sweet potato, onions, celery and carrots and mashed them together when soft with butter and milk. I added a good handful of grated cheddar cheese, an egg to bind and let the mixture cool until quite firm in the refrigerator. Once cool I collected a handful of the mixture, shaped into patties, dipped again into egg and rolled in crushed cornflakes. The resulting patty was fried in vegetable oil and served with baked beans on the side.

B-G made a good attempt on it. The plate looks a little orange I’ll grant you!

Cashew Nut and Pumpkin Seed Burgers

My friend Paul has contributed this recipe. Paul has been near vegetarian for 25 years and has a variety of interesting and delicious recipes up his sleeve as a result. He first told me about this burger recipe one evening while several of us were unwinding in the pub over a pint or two, and his burgers sounded utterly delicious. He was very kind to lend me the recipe and we were delighted with the result, which was a lovely evening meal to end a Bank Holiday weekend. I first planned to have them a few weeks ago, but Husband-Gusto has been away and he was vociferous that as a confirmed cashew nut lover, he wanted to be around when I cooked this meal too.  With crusty rolls, fresh lettuce, tomato, mayo and gherkin, these burgers were luxurious and decadent. The texture was firm and ‘meaty’. I really think you could serve this to a confirmed carnivore and they would not miss the meat. This is a definite keeper. I could not improve on the clear instructions, so have cut and paste Paul’s recipe direct from my e-mail.

Ingredients:

 

1 medium onion

2 large garlic cloves (or 4 small ones)

1 medium sized green pepper

2 mushrooms

100 g cashew nuts

25g pumpkin seeds

1 slice crusty wholemeal bread

1 green oxo or vegetable stock cube

1 egg

Pinch of mixed dried herbs.

Sea salt and pepper (or cayenne pepper) to taste.

Grape seed oil or other light oil for frying.

 

Chop or lightly blend the cashew nuts until large breadcrumb consistency.

Chop up the onion, garlic and green pepper and fry until soft.

Slice the musroom and add to the pan together with the pumpkin seeds and cashew nuts. reduce heat, stir, and fry gently until the mushrooms are cooked.

Remove from heat, drain of any excess oil and transfer contents to a mixing bowl.

Wipe the frying pan with kitchen towel for later use.

Add the green oxo or vegetable stock cube.

Add the pinch of mixed dried herbs

Blend the crusty bread into small breadcrumb consistency and add to bowl.

Add salt and pepper (or cayenne pepper) to taste

Add the egg.

 

Mix the ingredients well. The mixture is right if you can take a handful of the mixture and form a stable burgher shape between the palms of your hand. If too dry add a small splodge of milk, if too wet add more dry ingredients.

 

Form into burgher shapes and place in pan with more oil. Press down lightly on each burgher to make them flatter and fry gently on both sides until brown.

 

 

Sunday Burgers

In the past few years I have been very insistent on having a traditional Sunday roast on – wait for it- Sundays. I adore planning our weekly menus, and love to cook the full roast with trimmings. My usual go-to roast is my rosemary-lemon chicken, but I also often cook roast pork, as it is the special favourite of H-Gusto.

The vague plan for last Sunday was to cook roast duck. The Co-op have been selling whole ducks and duck legs lately, and I have bought a stash for my freezer, as I know from experience that what is being sold today may not be available tomorrow. However, H-G spent the day on the water, and Baby Gusto and I spent the vast majority of the day wandering around Northwood House and Park playing on the swings and the new seesaw, and by the time I got home again, had made lunch and B-Gusto had had his nap I really- frankly- could not be bothered faffing around with ducks, and hot ovens, and potato dauphinoise.

The Co-op have also recently been selling Venison Burgers. On Thursday I had bought 3 packs. Late afternoon I decided that today was the day to bring them out.

No burger is truly complete without picked gherkins. So, we had an almost embarrassingly  simple supper. Venison burgers. Burger buns. Mustard mayonnaise, sliced iceberg lettuce and tomatos. I could not be bothered to make chips either- homemade or frozen, so we had corn on the side. Plus wine. By no stretch of the imagination was this a great dish, although the venison burgers were really lovely.   They tasted fresh, not too gamey, and despite being grilled for approximately 3 minutes longer than desirable, were moist and tender. B-Gusto tucked in with- dare I say it- gusto.