Ugly Food and Lovely Children

This is how I spent Saturday....

Yeah, unfortunately, they seem to have inherited my singing genes.

When enjoying a lovely meal, we are enticed first of all by the smell and the appearance and later on by the taste. So when does ugly food ever stand a chance? "MMmmm, Ahh", you sigh, when that delightful smell hits your nostrils and you close your eyes for a moment in anticipation, fork and knife grasped in your greedy wee fists; here it comes and it's placed in front of you but SCREEEECHHHH...the big pile of pulchritude you fancied finding on your plate ends up looking just like the messy mud pies you made as a kid down by the abandoned nuclear power station/fireworks factory/old mine shaft.

Do you eat it? Do you close your eyes and just dive on in? Does it change your potential enjoyment of the dish? It shouldn't really, should it? Food is our friend and we should respect it, regardless of how it looks.....

...and with that in mind, we come to Helen's Steak Pie with Homemade Puff Pastry with a vowel missing; it didn't so much puff as pff....

Without further ado, I'll share the image; best to get it over with I've made it really small so as not to offend thee too much....

Now, this steak pie with homemade puff pastry made my family wince a little. Having spent many hours lovingly preparing it for the little darlings wee jobbies, I failed to notice the appearance might be a little....unappetising. The pff pastry, albeit dodgy looking in the extreme, was absolutely delicious; the beef had been stewed for hours in homemade beef stock and a red wine reduction with a hint of herbs, baby carrots, onions, baby potatoes, sausages and a few bay leaves.

I could have ate it til it was coming out my ears it was that good. I do tend to like my own creations though, even when others are running for the hills. Once the family were persuaded to try it by that I mean I said bleedin' well eat it you ungrateful wretches or I'll be putting in a call to Maggie Murphy's Home for Wayward Weans then they enjoyed it although the pff pastry was given a body swerve by all bar my husband who knows a good thing when he gets told by me sees it. So don't always judge a dish by it's cover or a book/person/animal for that matter; beauty lies within...sometimes way, waaaay within, but nonetheless.

Homemade puff pastry, incidentally, is really not that hard however on occasion, I think I would say there are times to put away the pinny, hang up the rolling pin and buy from the professionals. This is most definitely one of those times.

The beef stew was simmered in hot stock for 2 hours. I then placed it in a pie dish and covered it with my special pff pastry and baked in the oven for 25 minutes. Since the pie had potatoes in it, I served the pie, the whole pie and nothing but the pie.

I should have gone with the Yorkshire puddings as planned..

Another not entirely pleasant looking dish....

...which tasted lovely.

Salmon patties on a bed of spinach, watercress and rocket, cucumber, tomatoes, a little olive oil dressing with balsamic vinegar and leftover goats cheese pasta. A strange combination, leftovers you see, but it went really well together!

The salmon patties are the same as the fishcakes without the flour dipping and roasted in the oven after a quick fry in a pan to seal the top.

Pan-Fried Children with Gravy

These kids are driving me crazy! I've decided to have them for tea. This is what they think of the idea:

Warning: Mild Screaming

The weekend was really lovely. The house we booked was much better than it looked on the webpage and it looked pretty damn good; the photos did not do it justice, for instance, we had no idea that the kitchen would be so lovely, spacious and well equipped or that the huge bedrooms, all ensuite would be tastefully furnished or that there was even a balcony with a great view and the smell of lavender coming from huge pots next to the garden.

We were the first to arrive and the kitchen was my first port of call as I was cooking dinner that night. I prepared roast lamb by stabbing a leg joint with a knife and placing inside thin slices of garlic and sprigs of rosemary. I sprinkled on some salt and pepper and wrapped it in foil. I cooked it at 200 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes and then turned it down to around 160-170 for a further 2.5 hours, maybe longer...I was sipping the wine by then and everything became slightly warm and fuzzy...

I made my bbq sauce but this time, I added in two star anise and some ground fennel seeds just as the onion mixture was ready. I cooked these for a further minute before adding the soy sauce etc. Totally worth adding these if you can find them.

I had previously prepared my lamb koftas; bloody nora, I loved these! Especially with the bbq sauce. I think they'd also make great burgers and the low fat content really appeals.

We served the lamb with plain boiled rice, tsatziki, roasted tomatoes with thyme and Parmesan, with a little help from Ian, a lovely salad prepared by Val, pitta bread, olives and caramelised onions....except I forgot to reheat the caramelised onions and they sat in the fridge, cold and forlorn. We 'rescued' them the following evening by enjoying them with the BBQ. The BBQ was prepared and cooked by my friends whilst I sat back and enjoyed; the wonderful potato salad, pesto marinaded chicken, Aberdeen Angus steak beefburgers, tomato and mozzarella salad to name but a few was a feast to behold and I stuffed myself silly.



We visited nearby Coldingham Bay with it's wonderful beach, ideal for surfers. It was raining but we didn't care. We built a dam and a town to be destroyed. Val seemed to take great pleasure in this...my respect for that gal just grows and grows. Ann stood at the back to catch any 'real' children who may get swept away and I of course, supervised after one solitary dig.

What goes up....


Must come down.