Beetroot, Lentil, Parsley and Halloumi Salad

We found this recipe in the 2016 March edition of the Waitrose food magazine. It has become a family staple.

Vietnamese Crab Spring Rolls

Dinner using Cromer crab supplied by Regal Fish. When 10 year olds go for seconds, then I assume it's OK. Rhona (my wife) is fabulous when it comes to coming up with food ideas (she tells me)

Halibut in Herb Crust with Samphire, Peas and Potatoes

It's been a while since I have been using Regal Fish's produce, but last night we had Halibut in a herb crust, served with samphire, peas and potatoes. The crust was left over stale bread whizzed up with a garlic clove, a shallot, spring onion, tarragon, basil, dill, and parsley. Seeing as I had all these herbs and the trimmings from the fish a made a quick fish stock and thickened it slightly with a little corn starch.

It was delicious!

We are going to the Fat Duck!!!

I can't tell you how excited I am! It's my wife's birthday in April and "just for a laugh" I checked if there is a table available at the Fat Duck and guess what! They had one! (I know I am going overboard with the exclamation marks!)

Over the last few years we as a family have been following Heston Blumenthal and we have a quite a few of his books. We even tried soem of his dishes and made some which are best described as "inspired by Heston". For example (and that was before I started the blog) we did red cabbage gazpacho with mustard ice crram and the kids, now 10 and 13 - god knows how young they were then, went for thirds.

I also posted some of our experiments:

• Mother's Day Dinner Inspired by Heston
• Magic Powder
• Heston's Scallop

All in all Heston is probably THE food hero of mine and I am sooo looking forward to experience the real thing.

Lamb Lollipops with fried Gnocchi and "Grained" Broccoli

Rack of lamb for dinner today. Well, the kids call them lamb lollipops 😉. Done sous vide at 47C for 5 hours and then flash fried. Actually, the bone part blow torched. After the lamb had been fried I used the same pan (minus most of the fat) to roast some (bought) gnocchi.

For the greens I put some broccoli through a food processor and fried it on a sheet in the oven. That was a bit of an experiment, but the "audience" seemed to approve. Finished off with a lamb & onion gravy.

Quick Bacon and Cheese

Following on from Fake Cheese on Toast and the Ultimate Sandwich (in my humble opinion) I did a quick bacon and cheese open sandwich for lunch...

Moules et Frites

Got the idea from the current Waitrose magazine. It was delicious!

Finely chopped 2 shallots, 2 cloves of garlic and a small leak. Added them and 200ml of dry white wine, salt and pepper into a large pan and slowly reduced the wine to almost nothing. Then I added another 200ml of the wine and turned off the heat. While this was infusing I cleaned two nets of mussels. About half an hour before servicng I pre heated the oven to 220C. After putting the fries into the oven (approx 20 minutes), I started to re-heat the pan and then added the mussels. Once they had opened I remove them with a slotted spoon into a pre-warmed pan. I then added about 200ml double cream and a knob of butter (actually I used clover) and let that reduce a bit. Finally I added 2 tabelspoons each of chopped parsley and tarragon, poured that sauce over the mussels and served.

The whole family loved it, but we found that it is much more filling than you think.