Barbecue chicken and chips

Wednesday, 20th April

Easy food for a lazy, sunny evening. Not actually barbecued but cooked in the oven in a Stubbs Original BBQ sauce, which is always tasty. Accompanied by the right beer in the wrong glass. A delicious 12° Barley Wine called Geisha, from an italian brew-pub called Birrificio Troll. In a Kölsch glass. :)

Poussin in white wine, sage and lemon

Sunday, 17th April

I braised the poussin in a casserole on top of the stove, with white wine, grated lemon peel, shallots and sage (from the balcony!) and served it with sauteed potatoes.
The wine was a little old and, after adding it, I thought the sauce smelled as though it was going to come out rather sour. So I chopped up a few prunes and added those, which worked a treat. The sauce came out just right and nicely balanced between the zesty lemon and the sweet, rich prunes.  The meat of the poussin was delicious, especially the breast. Definitely worth a repeat.
No photo with this one. The photos I took turned out awful and made the meal look surprisingly unappetising, given how good it was.

Stilton and Fig tart - Creamy Morel Crostini

Saturday, 16th April

Party food! Stilton and Fig Tart (Tea at Fortnum and Mason, p51) and Creamy Morel Crostini.
The fig and stilton tart appealed to me from the first moment I saw the recipe. The filling is onions topped with beaten eggs and cream, then sliced figs and crumbled stilton.
It was pretty good but actually, the flavours didn't come out as strongly as I had hoped and I wish now that I had used more stilton.
The tart was also supposed to have a dressing made from walnut and olive oils, wine vinegar and chopped toasted walnuts. But after making it and tasting it, I decided against using it. I was worried that adding another strong flavour was going to mask the tastes of the fruit and cheese, which was a good decision as it turned out.  I did drizzle some walnut oil over at the last minute though.
While buying the figs and cheese I saw morels in the shop and wanted to make something with those as well. Hunting on the internet turned up a few ideas that sounded way too complicated, so I went for a nice simple option.  I chopped shallots and bärlauch and halved the morels, and then softened these together for a few minuted, then added a small tub of cream and reduced it to a thick sauce. Sliced french bread coated with olive oil and a little salt and toasted in the oven served as the base.  Very good although, again, the flavour of the morels didn't come through as strongly as I would have liked.
This was also, by chance, a vegetarian combination!

Braised Leg of Goat with Wild Garlic

Friday, 15th April

Leg of kid braised in white wine with shallots and wild garlic, caramelized sweet potato, asparagus with a tomato sauce. Essentially a made up recipe, based on a few ideas gleaned from the internet.
I bought the small leg of goat thinking to make an indian meal but, since Monika isn't such a big fan of Indian food, when it came to it I decided to cook something different. The meat was marinaded over night, in a mixture of rosemary, mustard seeds, garlic, oil and balsamic vinegar, then braised in white wine, in the oven under foil, with shallots and wild garlic (ramsons / bärlauch) for about 3 hours.
The asparagus was very fresh and needed less than 10 minutes to boil, and the sauce was made from onions, tomatoes, toasted almonds and a spoonful or red-pepper jam, fried together for a while and then pureed.
I diced the sweet potato and then started it with butter and a little sugar in the oven, but after 10 minutes it was only looking dry and some pieces had gone black from the inside and didn't look good at all. So I discarded the blackened pieces, moved the rest into small frying pan with a tight fitting lid and sauteed it instead. The undersides of some pieces got a little burned, but that didn't spoil the taste.
Overall very good. The meat was tended and moist and the vegetables nicely cooked and with a good combination of flavours. The asparagus and tomato sauce was especially good.

Red Brat-

Thursday, 14th April

Fresh bratwurst with herbs, red bratkartoffeln (red potatoes and red onions) and tomato/chili/basil chutney. Nothing complicated, just right for a TV dinner. Very tasty, but a little dry. Something with a bit more "gravy" than just chutney would have been good.

Veal Escalope with Pasta

Wednesday, 13th April

Pan fried veal escalopes, pasta in a tomato and basil sauce and sauteed mushrooms with bärlauch (from the balcony!).  The meat was flavourful and juicy, but not tender.  I still have not worked out the trick for getting pan-fried meat to come out tender.  Nice simple pasta sauce with tomato, onion and basil. I had intended to include the mushrooms in the sauce but decided to do them separately with the wild garlic from a pot on the balcony, that needed picking.

Lamb and Spinach pie

Sunday, 3rd April

A dish I have not cooked for years!  The pie is made with cubed lamb, onions, garlic, cumin, coriander, spinach and a spoonful of orange marmalade in filo pastry. Together with rosemary potatoes and courgette with a yoghurt dressing. The pie was every bit as good as I remember. Subtly spicy and sweet, the lamb was tender, the spinach flavoursome and the flaky pastry a lovely contrast to the richness of the filling. The courgettes were overdone for my taste (the perils of playing scrabble while cooking!), but overall a win! A bottle of blanc-de-noirs Spätburgunder sekt washed it down very nicely.