Sea bass & Langoustine

Mr Culinary and I are on holiday from work this week, so we’ve got a bit more time than usual to concentrate on culinary delights. One thing we had to do was introduce Mr Culinary to Seewoo (which some may recall me mentioning before) as he’d never been and was quite intrigued. They have an excellent fish counter, so I was pretty determined to get some nice seafood for dinner… and to pick up some accompaniments, I wanted to stop by another place I rarely have time to visit. Roots, Fruits and Flowers have a couple of stores in Glasgow, and it was their Great Western Road location we visited today. It’s actually 3 separate shops all next to each other – a florist, a wholefoods/deli store, and fruit & veg shop – and I always have so much fun when I go. Call me sad, but I adore shops like this, bursting with colourful produce and various other goodies.

I’m particularly loving the awesomely symmetrical front display!

I actually managed not to buy any little cakes, although I’m finding it difficult now to remember how or why. Neither of us had had any lunch by that point though, so we couldn’t resist getting a couple of savoury items from the deli to munch on our way to Seawoo. Mr Culinary opted for a burrito stuffed with chilli, salsa and sour cream, which he had heated up. It was lovely, the flavours were so fresh – which I can’t say is a word I normally associate with chilli or burritos! I only wanted a snack so I just went for a teeny little pork, sage and apple sausage roll… which may have been the best sausage roll I have eaten!

Thankfully, in spite of all the distracting deli food, we did actually pick up some dinner-related items, as well as some extras.

We picked up the smoked venison because, well, how could you not, really? I can’t remember if I’ve ever had it before, so it intrigued me. Now just to figure out what to do with it! The asparagus mostly went with our dinner tonight, and the ham is for the leftover asparagus, so it was mostly quite a sensible and purposeful shop.

I have one recommendation for any Glasgow dwellers – if you know what’s good for you, you will go to Roots and Fruits tomorrow and see if they have any strawberries left, and you will buy them. You may think two punnets is excessive (if you’re my kind of person you won’t have thought anything of having two punnets… two people, two punnets – makes sense) but we bought them this afternoon and have already eaten both. They are seriously the best strawberries I have ever had – the tiny ones are always the best ones.

Laden with our purchases, we then made our way to Seewoo, where we had a fairly speedy shop. We picked up a couple of other bits and bobs besides what we were in for, which I would sum up in a picture but my computer is hating me at the moment and will only let me post it sideways, so I’ll just leave it. The main event was our seafood anyway – we picked up a couple of sea bass fillets, as well as some live langoustine.

Normally if you’re buying live shellfish, I’d suggest putting it in the freezer for a bit before you cook, to put them to sleep, but ours didn’t survive long enough for me to feel the need (we clearly don’t offer very good crustacean care in our flat).

I made a simple sauce, finely chopping leeks, a shallot, and lots of garlic, and softening the lot in butter. Which may be one of the best-smelling culinary processes ever.

After I’d softened up the leeks, garlic and shallot, I added some wine and reduced it back down for a bit more flavour, before adding the sea bass fillets to the mix. I had new potatoes boiling at the side by this point too, and I cooked the langoustine by dunking them in the potato pot (in the interests of saving energy… and using less dishes!) for a couple of minutes and scooping them back out with tongs – easy peasy! I cooked the asparagus in the same way for two minutes before draining the potatoes – this is where large pots come in handy.

I popped the langoustines into the pan for the last few seconds as well, just to soak up some of the sauce. It’s best to do this only for a brief mix about, because it’s easy to overcook them. Luckily that is something I managed to avoid and they turned out just perfect (if I do say so myself).

Apologies, I know that’s an awful picture. It was such a good meal though – I scooped up the bits in the sauce along with the sea bass and with the langoustine tails and it just went perfectly together. The only things left at the end were our empty shells!

BBQ Pulled Pork

I’ve made pulled pork once before, for a dinner party, and it was amazing. I’ve been searching for an opportune moment to make it ever since, and as I had my last ever uni exam last week and had the day off work for it, it seemed as good a time as any. When I made it before, I used this recipe: http://www.thelondoner.me/2012/02/coca-cola-pulled-pork.html which was fantastic, and I definitely recommend. This time around I used the same basic principle – pork, coke, BBQ sauce – but I used pork shoulder instead of ribs, as it’s less finicky. I also only cooked it for just over 4 hours, because I did end up a bit short of time. I definitely don’t think the shorter cooking time harmed it though, it was juicy, falling apart and melt-in-the-mouth tender and delicious.

Yeah, yeah, it looks somewhat gross while cooking. Totally worth it though!

Oh, I also did this on the lowest heat on the hob, because I haven’t gotten around to replacing my casserole dish and after that disaster I was a little wary of putting this pot (with plastic handles) in the oven for 4 hours.

Speaking of hobs actually, Mr Culinary and I just moved into a new flat, and instead of a small, frustrating electric hob of the type I’ve been forced to use since moving out of my mum’s house, we have this beauty:
I’m very much in love.

Ahem, I digress. After the pork was sufficiently cooked, I popped it onto a plate and shredded it up, mixing with some of the juices for some extra flavour and… juices.There are many ways you can eat pulled pork, and we had decided to go for burritos. Alongside the pork, I made rice with pinto beans, and we made some epic burritos with sour cream, BBQ sauce, cheddar cheese, rice, pinto beans and the pulled pork. I do feel the need for vegetation with all my meals, but I’m not a huge fan of limp, warm lettuce tucked into burritos and I quite frankly couldn’t be bothered cooking up some peppers or anything, so we just had salad on the side. I haven’t even pictured it because it so was not the main event, I just wanted to remind y’all to eat your greens.

So here we come to the burrito creation:

(A bit of artwork on the BBQ sauce layer… squeezy bottles are fun)

I was a bit over generous with the fillings and it was really hard to wrap them up, but I pretty much managed (by that I mean, after rolling them, I put the bit that had fillings exploding out of it facedown on the plate so it looked neatly and professionally rolled from above).I was totally defeated by mine and ended up tragically eating it with a knife and fork (I know, I know) while Mr Culinary manfully ploughed in and ate it the way it was meant to be eaten:Kudos!

I definitely recommend putting your pulled pork in a burrito – these were so tasty and generally just a little bit epic. I would probably go for more pinto beans next time, just because they go so well with the whole thing. And maybe a bit of lime juice in the rice, because I meant to do that this time but forgot to buy limes (I mixed the rice with some of the juices from the pork instead, yum!). Next time you have some time to start preparing your dinner 4-6 hours in advance, and want something hearty and filling and awesome, give this a go. You will not regret it.

Christmas!!

I know this is a tad late in coming but I’m finally getting around to posting about my actual Christmas. I go to my mum’s every year for Christmas, and my step-dad cooks the Christmas dinner (the best Christmas dinner in the land). The main event is sandwiched between a glorious Christmas Eve dinner and the spectacle that is Boxing Day leftovers. It’s like a 3-day food dream.

We started off with a whole salmon, which I completely neglected to take a picture of while it was still in one piece. I apologise profusely but it completely slipped my mind. As a prelude to the salmon, my mum prepared the cutest little home-made rolls, and cream of celery soup.

My mum can make a delicious ‘cream of’ soup out of every vegetable in existence, I think. I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of celery but this was really tasty, and the rolls were just delightful.

The picture’s steamed up a bit – I was too eager to dive in to take another picture. I think the sauce was a kind of Mornay sauce, but less cheesy as my step-dad abhors cheese sauces. It was delicious anyway, and went so nicely with the salmon.

Christmas morning dawned with stockings and the traditional stocking food:

It’s obviously not Christmas without chocolate coins, chocolate oranges, and the obligatory Satsuma stuffed into the toe of your stocking! We also, every year, have an interlude with champagne and smoked salmon on toast with lashings of lemon and black pepper… which I again forgot to take a picture of (you need to move quickly to get to the smoked salmon in my household, there’s no time for faffing about with a camera).

I did manage to capture this festive tradition though! Snowballs! For those not in the know, this is a mix of Advocaat and lemonade. I can’t even begin to describe what it tastes like but I know some people say it’s similar to eggnog (I have never tried eggnog so don’t know).

As you can see above, I happily received several food-related gifts. I spent much of the evening on Christmas day regaling everyone with interesting facts from Larousse – and one of the reasons I love my family so much is that they actually did find the facts interesting! While they sat around a midnight cheese-board, they pestered me for all the information on cheese I could muster… it’s nice having interests that overlap!

Now you may have some pictures of the main event:

^This was my plate. On it: turkey; carrots; sprouts with pancetta and chestnuts; bacon wrapped chipolatas; bacon wrapped apple slices; bacon wrapped stuffing ball; non-bacon wrapped stuffing ball; a different stuffing entirely; cranberry sauce; goose-fat roasties; parsnips; home-made gravy and of course lashings of bread sauce. It was utterly, gloriously heavenly. I couldn’t finish it (I honestly tried to put modest portions on my plate but it just seemed to snowball) but I had the rest of my plate at midnight while the others scoffed cheese – give me bread sauce over cheese any day. Even without finishing it, midway through the meal I had to briefly retire to change into ‘fat pants’ (my pyjamas).

And obviously after all that, the section of my stomach reserved for pudding needed filled to balance it all out! Luckily we had something of an avalanche of desserts, as our family friends brought 3 (home-made pavlova, adorable individual trifles, and Muscovado meringues), my step-dad’s mum brought one (traditional Christmas pudding), and I brought one (a birthday cake – one of our family friends has the misfortune to have a Christmas birthday, and Christmas pudding is an awful birthday cake).

I sadly didn’t manage to get a picture of the pudding all aflame, but, if you look closely at the top of the trifle you might be able to see that it’s decorated with tiny edible STARS! Which should make up for the lack of fire. I will do a separate post at some point with more details on the cake making… isn’t it adorable!?

Now… this has turned into a really long post so I’m thinking I might do Boxing Day separately too, in a day or so!

I hope you all had a wonderful and scrumptious Christmas 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pre-Christmas, Christmas Dinner

As I may have mentioned once or twice, I adore Christmas food. I love it so much that I am simply not content with just one Christmas dinner a year. I have in fact decided that 3 a year is a good number – obviously not counting repeat dinners created from the leftovers. On Friday I had my first of the year, at my work’s Christmas night out. I’m a bit gutted that I forgot to take pictures of it because it was ridiculously good – probably the best night-out Christmas dinner I’ve ever had (in case anyone wants to see this for themselves, you can obtain it in Strata on Glasgow’s Queen Street. I can’t find their website to link you though, sorry!).

This post is about my second dinner of the year – a now four-years-old tradition between me and my old flatmates from the days of student accommodation, where we gather to stuff ourselves silly. It’s pretty awesome. As we’re all scattered to the winds at the moment, I thought I’d make an extra-special festive effort, and went all-out in preparing my dining table:

Sadly this picture doesn’t show the miniature Christmas tree I later procured – it’s very cute anyway. And the plant pot is swaddled in a red cover decorated with a white snowflake, so it matches the theme and everything. N’awww.

Now, normally for this dinner I just cook a big chicken, but it can be hard getting enough meat off for everyone (and I’m terrible at carving so it doesn’t help) and as we had 6 people this year and I was worried about not having enough food for everyone (not a problem, as you will later see), I decided to buy a turkey crown instead. I was a little scared, as I’ve never actually cooked turkey before (apart from escalopes which really do not count) and I did worry that I might accidentally dry it out. To guard against this, I prepared a sage and lemon butter to smother it in:

At first I smoothed it under the skin, and then used the rest to coat the whole thing, for good measure. I also poured some wine into the roasting tray – last time I cooked a chicken I did that and it was beautifully moist, and it makes for good gravy.

Mr Culinary isn’t the biggest fan of turkey, and I was worried about how it would come out, so I also cooked a ham. It was actually glorious. I bought it from M&S – they have a whole range of differently sized, differently flavoured hams. I opted for one with an apple glaze and it was so tasty. I’m not much of a ham fan really, and I loved it.

To save oven space I cooked it the night before and just served it cold, for that is the beauty of hams.

I couldn’t do a sit-down starter, because as I realised too late during my dinner party for Mr Culinary’s parents, I don’t actually own enough plates/bowls or dishes of any sort to serve dinner and starters in the same meal, without a lot of washing up in between. And no one wants that. I decided a selection of nibbles was the way to go, and that way we could just lounge about the living room nibbling and chatting before going to the table (which is also in the living room but the seating is rather less comfortable). I confess I did cheat monstrously with my nibbles – Tesco had a fairly delicious selection of Christmas nibbles and I took full advantage. I also prepared smoked salmon and cream cheese blinis – the immensely difficult preparation of buying ready-made blinis, smearing them with cream cheese, topping with salmon and throwing lemon quarters and black pepper liberally around the plate.

I didn’t take as many pictures of food as I would quite have liked to – maybe it’s just me but cooking an enormous amount of food for 6 people keeps you rather too busy to be snap happy unfortunately. The next opportunity for pictures was after everything was on the table:

Here you can see the ham, a tray of cranberry and clementine stuffing, brussels sprouts (such a misunderstood veg. I genuinely adore them), buttered carrots and peas, pigs in blankets all mixed in with pork, sage and onion stuffing balls, along with a big bowl of bread sauce and a couple of ramekins of cranberry sauce. I think you can just about catch my home-made turkey gravy in the corner there too. Rather unfortunately we then discovered that was all we could really fit on the table. In a burst of quick thinking, we moved part of my computer desk over – I have a little unit of drawers which isn’t attached to the main desk, thankfully.

Here we have the turkey, goose-fat roast potatoes, honey-glazed roasted parsnips, and another bowl of bread sauce (for there is nothing worse than running low on the bread sauce).

In these pictures you can see the little Christmas tree on the windowsill, where we moved it to make room for food. The glasses contain that festive favourite, buck’s fizz.

This was my mammoth plate of food – it took me two sittings to finish (but finish I did, oh yeaah).

Michael was in charge of bringing desserts – he opted for profiteroles, an apricot tart, and macaroons. We had a combination of macaroons and tiny toblerones for ‘pre dessert’, then I made up a sharing plate of profiteroles for anyone who wanted to dive in:

The tart was mentioned but we were all far too full to even attempt it.

I thought I’d leave you with a picture of our tree, as it was looking decidedly festive with its pile of presents!

Pleasant Pheasant

I really enjoy going into M&S near Christmas, because it’s always full of exciting goodies. One particularly pleasant addition to the shelves are game birds. They do sell them occasionally during the year, but not terribly often and only for short periods of time (I don’t know anything about game birds or hunting in general, and it’s just occurred to me now that perhaps this is the time of year that people mostly go out shooting them, hence them being more widely available. That may not be true, but it feels like a sensible conclusion). I took advantage of the selection this year to pick up a pheasant:

As you can probably read on the packaging, this pheasant led a happy, wild life, roaming around freely (until someone shot him…). Happy pheasants make tasty pheasants and he was a very tasty fellow indeed.

I did have some trials and tribulations on my road to creating my pheasant dinner though – my idea was to pot-roast him, with cider, apples and bacon… and before sticking him in the oven I browned him off quickly in the casserole dish, a process which was fraught with much drama:

While innocently turning the pheasant, I heard a most horrifically loud bang, and leapt back energetically (as you do… and trust me, if you hear an unexpected, loud noise from your cooker area, the best instinct probably is to jump back until you can assess the source). It took me a minute to realise that the whole thing had split in half, and scared of the whole thing exploding, I chose the sensible option and frantically called on Mr Culinary to move the casserole dish off the heat. I know that’s not terribly chivalrous of me but my survival instinct cares not.

Due to this, my pheasant did not end up terribly brown, because after that I was too frazzled to brown him off on a pan, and instead just transferred him to my other casserole dish, which I refrained from putting on the hob. To the pheasant I added bacon lardons, apple slices, cider and a touch of chicken stock, and popped in the oven for about half an hour.

Above, you can see one of the sides – slightly smoky cheesy leeks. I used baby leeks, and made a cheese sauce – a simple roux, with smoked cheese, English mustard powder, wholegrain mustard and nutmeg. I was worried that the smoked cheese might be a bit overpowering, but it was actually really subtle and pretty perfect (even if I do say so myself).

When the pheasant was almost cooked, I removed all the surrounding apples/cider/bacon and left the pheasant aside to rest for a wee bit, while I reduced the sauce down. When it was about half gone, I added ‘seasonal greens’ (I’m pretty sure it was just cabbage) and popped the lid on to let the cabbage cook briefly while I removed the legs and all the meat from the pheasant. When the cabbage was cooked I added double cream and all the pheasanty bits to the pan, and mixed it all in together to get this:

I realise it looks like a bit of a mess, but it was delicious. Everything in it just went together so well… I made it for Mr Culinary and my friend Amy, and they both dug back in for seconds , so I feel it was successful!

As well as cheesy leeks I just boiled up some baby carrots, and popped on some duck-fat roasties. They weren’t the best roasties ever because my timings were all off so I had to keep them warm in the oven for a wee bit, but I do have some good tips for roasties:

• Parboil them briefly first.
• Make sure they are as dry as you can get them after draining – steaming them over the hob after you’ve drained them to get rid of the excess water is quite effective.
• Whether you’re using goose or duck fat, vegetable oil or whatever else you might you – make sure it is horrifically hot before you put the potatoes in it. Pour it onto your roasting tin/tray and heat it up over the hob or in the oven beforehand.
• Most people turn their potatoes during cooking. I don’t, and mine are genuinely fabulous. When I put them in the fat, I spoon it over the tops so they are evenly coated, put them in the oven and just leave them there until they’re done.

 

 

 

 

 

Moroccan Chicken One-Pot

A few weeks ago, Mr Culinary and I picked up the BBC Good Food magazine, mostly due to the absolutely delectable-looking chicken dish on the cover.

I made only three changes to the recipe – it calls for dried cherries but I used apricots instead, and I omitted the mint leaves, and added two green peppers.

The base of the sauce consists of garlic, ginger, onions and tomatoes whizzed up in the food processor, with sliced onions (I think for a bit of added texture), butternut squash, chicken stock, brown sugar and red wine vinegar cooked into it.

After browning the chicken breasts, I removed them from the pan – they are returned to the pan to cook fully after the base for the sauce has been cooked. I softened the onions, added spices – cumin, cinnamon and ground coriander, then added the paste.

The chicken gets all nice and torn up and distributed around the dish in a delicious manner, and then comes the tastiest idea in the history of ideas. Probably.

Basically, once you’ve cooked the dish, the recipe tells you to finely chop a red onion, and mix it with crumbled feta and lemon zest (and the mint leaves if you are using them) and sprinkle it all over the top.

Isn’t it just so colourful and fantastical looking? It tastes amazing too, the feta in particular adds delightful little bursts to the dish.

I had Michael over to help me consume it, and he brought over half a plaited loaf he had made! It was sprinkled with sesame seeds and much neater than the attempts by Mr Culinary and I!

It was supremely soft and delicious… pretty much bread to die for! It was absolutely perfect for mopping up the juices from the stew as well.

Lemon Sole

I’m so very, very sorry! I know I’ve been absolutely, horribly lax and not posted in forever but I have horrific amounts of uni work to get through (and I’ve not even started back yet – nightmare!). I’m about to go into my final year so unfortunately that does mean my blogging will take a bit of a hit. It’s not even really the time it takes to write a post (which is a surprisingly long time, sometimes) but if I’m busy studying I might frequently fall back on student staples like pesto pasta and microwaved baked potatoes – and let’s face it, who wants to read about that? I will attempt to cook decent food as much as possible, and post about it when I can… but for the next nine months things will be a little erratic.

On the plus side, Mr Culinary and I bought a new potato masher! So excited by this was I, that I promptly made up some spring onion mash for dinner that night.

How dreamy is that? With a wee dollop of cream to give it that extra oomph ♥.

To accompany my mash, I went all experimental and cooked a fish that I have never before attempted. In fact, never mind cooked myself, I think I’ve only eaten it three times in my life.

I’m really loving these individual, vacuum-packed fish fillets from M&S. I like how they do some quite interesting fish – I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen Sole in a supermarket that doesn’t have a proper fish counter. They’re also pretty handy for when I want fish and Mr Culinary doesn’t, which tends to be most of the time. I decided to use the butter that came in the packet this time – a ‘lemon and sea salt’ butter as you can see from the pack.

The pack suggests cooking the fish, then melting the butter and pouring it over, but I wanted to cook it in the butter like when I made my sea bass to really infuse the flavour. I think that might have been a problem though – the butter was really bland and not worth being there really. When I did the sea bass in the butter though it was so lovely and flavoursome, so I do suspect the M&S butter-lemon-salt mix is just not up to par.

I had it with peas, carrots, wilted spinach (is it just me or is spinach a match made in heaven with just about every fish in existence?) and my scrummy spring onion mash. Looking at this picture I’m quite impressed by my rectangular carrot-cutting skills, they look oddly even!

Apart from the disappointing butter, the dinner as a whole was very nice. I’m pretty proud of my first attempt at sole!

Spatchcocked Poussin

I’ve had a couple of poussins in the freezer for a few weeks now, so I decided something should be done with them. I’ve cooked poussins before, both in a normal chicken shape and ready-spatchcocked. In the spirit of culinary experimentation I decided it was about time I spatchcocked one myself, so that is what was done with the pair I had.

Poussins, for those who don’t know, are just young chickens – generally less than a month old at slaughter. That picture doesn’t really give a good idea of scale, but they are quite teeny and cute in person.

Spatchcocking basically involves removing the spine and breaking the breastbone so that the bird lies flat – it means they can go under the grill and cook evenly. It’s also quite a good way to do birds if they’re going on the BBQ.

This picture gives you a bit of a better idea of scale! Mr Culinary did most of the actual cutting, as I tried and couldn’t muster the strength to cut through the ribs… pathetic I know.

This was the finished product, all nice and flat. In case any of you wish to spatchcock any poultry and aren’t sure how, Mr Culinary and I have prepared a little video for you all. How exciting!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A8M-4lUH20 < you can watch the video here, as I’m too cheap to pay for WordPress’ video upgrade.

I smothered the flattened chickens in a delicious mix of spices and honey… there was Tandoori Masala powder mix I got at SeeWoo, paprika, lime powder, lemon pepper, oregano, thyme, turmeric… I’m honestly not sure what else, sorry. I was just having fun chucking things in!

This made the most extraordinarily sticky substance, which was rather difficult to smear over the poussins, but I managed in the end. It smelled absolutely divine – I wish there was some way to pipe the smell through the interwebs because it was utterly dreamy.

I just popped them in the oven to cook. We just had half of one each, leaving the other for the next day’s dinner. I read in a cookbook once that a whole poussin makes 1 portion, for 1 person, which is frankly ridiculous. I’m all for giant portions but I still think it’s rather greedy to eat the whole thing in one go. We had them with rice boil with saffron, and carrots and leeks sautéed in honey.

The rice wasn’t very saffron-y. I’ve never made saffron rice before, so I just bunged a spoonful of saffron in with the rice and cooked it, hoping for the best. I saw complex things online involving boiling it in milk first and a lot of other palaver, and I just couldn’t be bothered. The veg was nice… pretty sweet, but they went quite nicely with the overall dish. Despite being smothered in honey the poussins weren’t particularly sweet, because all the other flavours took over, so it was saved from being a honey explosion. It would probably be nice with stir fried veg too, or salad or something, but this was actually a fully store-cupboard/freezer meal so I just used what I had in!

Fajitas!

I haven’t had home-made fajitas in ages, so on Thursday I made some for Mr Culinary and I. They were scrumptious – I do love a good fajita.

I make the chicken delicious by marinading it in a bunch of stuff – everything in the picture above as well as paprika which for some reason didn’t get in the group photo. While this is soaking up the marinade, I prepare my veg – onion, red pepper and green pepper, and also make a cooling salsa.

The salsa consists of finely chopped tomatoes and cucumber, mixed with fresh coriander, lime juice and seasoning. I sometimes put a finely chopped red onion in it too, but I couldn’t be bothered – Mr Culinary doesn’t like the salsa so it seemed like a pointless extra effort just for myself.

We also add sour cream and cheddar cheese to our fajitas, as well as the laziest ingredient ever: tinned refried beans.

Yes, I know they look revolting. But they’re delicious. I should probably actually try making them myself, but until I get round to it, I’m happy with the tinned ones. Please try and get over the fact that they’re rather less appetizing looking than cat food…

I cooked up the chicken and then the veg on my griddle, and mixed them all about so the veg got nice and covered in the tasty juices, and voila, dinner pretty much served.

Fajitas are a good dinner party food because everyone can pick and choose what they like – plus it’s difficult to make small volumes. We had loads of leftovers which was a good thing because they made excellent weekend snacks!

Vegetable & Gruyère Tart

I used Gruyère for the first time ever a few days ago, using it on a roasted vegetable tart for a bit of extra oomph. I didn’t realise that it’s a bit of a smelly cheese, and Mr Culinary and I were slightly appalled when I opened the pack. It tasted lovely though, so it was all worth it.

For my veg, I roughly chopped a red onion and a red and yellow pepper, then coated them in a mix of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper before popping in the oven for a wee bit.

While they were cooking, I rolled out the pastry (Jus-Rol puff, lazy but delicious) and scattered a layer of grated Gruyère over it.

I studded that with some sun-dried tomatoes before popping on the roasted veg.

The pastry itself was well undercooked. It had puffed up but was still pale, but as both of us like soggy pastry and were too hungry to wait for it to cook properly, that’s how we ate it.

We had it with a simple salad, and it was really nice. The Gruyère gave the tart a really tasty twist, and made it more filling that it probably would have otherwise been. It’s a pretty quick mid-week meal too (although no quick enough for us, apparently) but with a hint of poshness, or something. It would be nice with olives too, if only Mr Culinary didn’t hate them 😦