Friday 29 May - Summer Supper

Unusually for us, we decided to do a three course meal on a Friday - this meal was based on things we had in the cupboard, coupled with us feeling Summery, and it being Italian week in Lidl .

First course was Asparagus with Bolzano Sauce - I had heard someone on Radio 2 cooking this last week and realised it was out of a book that I have, but haven't really used before

The asparagus was poached in water, butter, salt and sugar and served warm with the sauce.

This was a bit like a tartare sauce, but starting with sieved hard boiled egg yolk instead of raw

Lemon juice, white wine, mustard, hopped herbs and olive oil were beaten into the yolks, and then the chopped egg whites were folded in. This is definitely one to do again - it was delicious.

 

Main course was based on this Sardinian Fregola which we picked up in the Deli in Lee on Solent last week

 

The partially cooked fregola was added to a base made from fried onions and bacon, white wine and stock. Then fresh podded peas were added, and some lovely fresh chopped mint.

Served with a dollop of ricotta on the top, which went all creamy when stirred in as we ate.

Finally, we had picked up the weekend offer in Lidl - a punnet of fresh apricots. The recipe I was planning on  called for dried apricots, but Lidl seem to have stopped selling these.
I poached these, and then pureed them, and passed the puree through a sieve to get rid of any stringy bits.

I added a squeeze of honey to the puree, and then just plain greek yoghurt, and into the ice cream maker to churn until frozen

We served this with some soft almond biscuits. It was very fresh tasting, but perhaps a little bit 'dry', and might be improved by a adding a little bit of cream to the yoghurt.

Monday 25 May - Watercress and Gruyere Souffle

On a bit of a quest to use up some eggs, and not made a Souffle for years. So long in fact that we realised we don't own a souffle dish, so a frantic Bank Holiday Monday hunt for one ensued. No joy and we ending up borrowing one.

 I found this recipe in a Valentine Warner book, and thought it would make a change from the usual plain cheese one.

The dish started by blanching watercress, squeezing dry and blending to a puree. No way was my squeezed out watercress going to turn into any sort of puree, so I ended up adding some of the milk that was due to be made into the sauce base.

The base for the souffle was a thick roux, made in the usual way.

Then grated gruyere, egg yolks and the watercress puree were added and stirred in.

This mixture then had the beaten egg whites folded in, and was poured into a dish that I had buttered and dusted with grated parmesan (rather than the flour that was suggested in the original recipe)

Grated gruyere over the top, and into the oven. Once the cooking time was up it was served, put back in the dish and back into the oven again as it wasn't cooked

This was served with some homemade olive bread.

Plates were cleared, but I felt it was missing something - I would probably add some more flavourings to the base sauce - mustard maybe, and use a strong cheddar rather than a gruyere next time - the colour though was beautiful!

Saturday 16 May - Mushroom Cannelloni

Another new cook book from The Works - Carluccios Pasta . This recipe was for Mushroom Cannelloni with truffles, not surprisingly truffles are hard to come by round here, so we found some truffley flavours that we could add for the same effect

We made the pasta, and rolled it out using the attachment on the Kitchen Aid, and the squares were then cooked for one minute.

For the filling we dried porcini were soaked and then chopped, and fried along with some chopped garlic and fresh red chilli

Because wild mushrooms are also rather hard to come by round here, I added a pack of frozen wild mushrooms, along with some fresh chestnut mushrooms, and these were all cooked for about 10 minutes, before adding a spoonful of the porcini paste.

The mushroom filling was rolled in the pasta, and placed in the serving dishes - I chose to serve in individual dishes, with two rolls of pasta per person

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The cheese sauce was made by melting taleggio with milk, then adding egg yolks and truffle oil. The was then poured over the pasta, and a grating of parmesan was added before baking the dishes.

We served this was a green salad, and some crusty bread.

The meal was finished off with a tarte tatin, which we served simply with some Creme Fraiche