What we ate on our holidays

You would think having a food blog would maybe mean you could probably cook. Sometimes though, it can and does go spectacularly wrong. Two weeks in Lanzarote, self-catering, in a limited kitchen, with limited supplies made me conjure up this stunning scrambled egg and fish finger dish. If you look closely, you will see the brown bits in the scrambled egg. I blame the cooker controls for that, they didn't indicate what was low medium and hot. The fish fingers were so godawful mrs tnr refused to eat them.


Still harping on about the limited supply, I did manage to put tohether a respectable salad with the delicious white asparagus the Spanish like so much.




It was Mrs tnr's birthday (Significant Number on the high side) so we dined in the delightful Restaurant Almacen de Sal in Playa Blanca. Started of with Champagne cocktails, followed by me having Shoulder of Lamb, it was enormous, served with a sort of Dauphinois and Mrs tnr having Veal Escalope. Absolutely delicious was the verdict passed on both. This was followed by dramatic Crepe Suzettes for the both of us. Stunning meal in a beautiful restaurant, with excellent service and pleasant piano accompaniment on the Baby Grand.



Our table was the one on the left, below.




Okay so strictly speaking Paella is a Valencian dish rather than a Canarian one. Nevertheless with the abundance of fresh seafood available we simply couldn't resist a late lunch washed down by copious beer and Sangria.


We constantly watch any television show about food at home. So on holiday Who Kitchen Here was simply unmissable, not least for the awkwardly translated title.



This was a barbecue and a half. Incredibly this meat-fest was being slowly cooked over a volcano!

Winter Feast

I have wanted to make this for such a long time. Finally got round to it with the acquistion last weekend of some very good quality organic Toulouse sausages.

First roast off your duck legs for an hour and a half.


Then start on your bean stock with a carrot, half a head of garlic, an onion, sprigs of rosemary and thyme.

Then you add a pound of pork belly and bring to the boil and let it simmer for a while.


Then you fry off some onion and garlic followed by the Toulouse sausages.


Drain your stock and add all the ingredients so far to the casserole, including the duck legs, a couple of chopped carrots, tomatoes and an onion, along with 2 tins of haricot beans.

Slap it into a hot oven for a couple of hours and 15 minutes before the end, cover with breadcrumbs and drizzle with duck or goose fat.

Et voila! Cassoulet served with creamed potatoes. Yummy.


Washed down nicely with a glass or two of Martas Vineyard Malbec Signature Reserve, sold to me by Marta herself for the knock down sum of £12.50 at last weekends BBC Good Food Show in Glasgow.

For dessert we had Cointreau Souffle, couldn't be arsed photographing it though.

Supper

A snip at £1.87 from Tesco with a nice mayonaisse dip.

Baby Cow Heaven

Aperitifs

We went to an organic food festival in Glasgow last Sunday. It was an excellent day out, lots of tastings and some demonstrations as well. We found a stall selling organic, field raised, grass fed veal. We bought some and had it last night. It was unbelievably delicious. We coated it in lemon zest and peppercorn breadcrumbs and had it accompanied by sauteed potatoes and baby greens. Washed down with a few glasses of Italian Barbera it was a splendid meal, even if we did both fall asleep on the sofa afterwards, missing the film we rented.