Catch it, kill it, eat it!

Okay maybe not catch it. Buy it live from the Wee Hurrie at Troon harbour. Amazing fish and chip shop. They do lobster suppers for about £ 18! The also do a whole range of locally caught fish and seafood at reasonable prices to boot. Two of the above cost £5 and made the most amazing crab salad with passion fruit vinaigrette ala Gordon Ramsay. Apparently, to humanely dispatch the live crabs, you either kill them prior to cooking or put them in the freezer for a couple of hours before boiling them. I opted for the latter. Then its a case of dressing them, which I have to admit is one hell of a fouter! The recipe I was following only required the white meat, so that made it a bit easier. When I was finished I thought this wasn't a lot for a main course, which was our plan. Mrs tnr looked at the book and said "This is a starter!" "Oops" says I. Had to pop down to Tesco then for some microwave shit as a main course didn't I. Twit!

Burns Supper A la Andy Bell

So close to Burns' night we fell over the Haggis stockpiled in Tesco. It reminded me of the recipe given to us by Andy Bell following our pre-Christmas visit to London.

Andy's original recipe went like this:

Steamed Haggis with a creamy Drambuie and Mustard sauce.

Description:
Easy and quick way to eat your national dish any time and good for serving as a surprise starter at dinner parties for foreigners. I've done this loads of times and (almost) everyone raves about it. I've adapted it from the Unicorn Inn Restaurant recipe. Veggie haggis is easy to buy if you're so inclined but the ingredients need bolstering with some black pepper if this is the case. Equally good with most whiskies but Drambuie does the trick.

Ingredients:
450g Haggis
Olive Oil
2 Shallots
Large dessertspoon of Grainy Mustard
2 tablespoons of Drambuie
100ml of Crème Fraîche
50g Salted Butter

Directions:
Oil the inside of four ramekins or similar moulds, (try coffee cups if need be), and firmly fill each one with the haggis. Steam for ten minutes.

Meanwhile melt the butter in a pan and add the fairly finely chopped shallots, cooking until soft. Add the mustard, stirring until mixed through. Spoon in the Drambuie, warmed if possible, and set it alight. Shake until the flames go out, pour in the crème Fraîche and stir till hot.

Turn out the moulds and pour over the sauce, garnish with whatever is to hand. Looks really impressive for so little work and tastes tremendous.

Number Of Servings: Four

Preparation Time: Can be done in twenty minutes, needs serving as soon as the sauce is ready.

Not having Drambuie to hand I substituted Laphroiag, which I reckon worked really well. I am particularly partial to the smoked peaty flavour of the Islay malt. Mrs tnr, I am sure, would have preferred the Drambuie. We'll certainly make it again though.

Happy Hour

Singapore Slings. Mrs tnr has actually drank these in Raffles. I had my first last night and my second will be in an hour or so as an aperitif. Bloody brilliant they are.

Breakfast A La Reidski

When we were in London just before Christmas, Reidski made us this deleicious breakfast of nice toasted bread, spread thinly with butter and marmite, then avocados and thinly sliced tomatoes on top. Up until that point in my life I hated marmite with a passion. Now its quite good really. Post Christmas I'm inent on losing abit of weight, 6lbs in two weeks so far, so this breakfast will replace the occasional rolls and slice (Lorne Sausage) Saturday Breakfasts. They will now be extremely occasional!

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.