Sat Bains Restaurant and Rooms

Third post of the day and I'm on a roll.  Just have to report on a STUPENDOUS gastronomic experience I had in Nottingham last week to celebrate one year of being engaged (and I suppose to celebrate not being able to afford a wedding).  

For any serious foodies out there Restaurant Sat Bains http://www.restaurantsatbains.com/ turned out to be one of the best places we have eaten at in this country.  We opted for the ten course tasting menu (with the wine pairing...if you going to do something might as well do it properly) three hours later we emerged from the dining room, happier, possibly heavier and definitely a little drunk.  

For us the menu started and ended on a high.  The delicious Scallop dish; pan seared scallop with a perfectly cooked oblong of squash and a chorizo 'jam', was perfected with a cumin puree (at least I think that is what it was).  The Blueberries dish, the one I was least looking forward to, was the only dish that we both rated as 10/10.  All the desserts were magnificent in my opinion and if you love food it is the perfect night away.  We stayed in the rooms at the restaurant all decorated to a high spec (our room included a jacuzzi bath and lounge area) and it is so lovely after eating and drinking so much that you only have to travel a few yards back to your room.  

My dinner last night, and my lunch today :-)

I have been making these tray bakes for the last few weeks and they are a really quick and easy dinner.  This was the first time I used chicken as I usually make it with salmon (both work well).  I was inspired by Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals for this one (I'm not ashamed).  Roasting the tomatoes in the dish is inspired as it makes a beautiful sweet sauce (in the tray I have chicken, asparagus, tomatoes, lemon, half a chilli, grated garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil). The pesto is basil, parsley, garlic, anchovies, capers, parmesan, lemon and olive oil all blitzed up.  It would have been better if I had a handful of toasted pine nuts...next time maybe.

 With the leftover pesto from last night I griddled some aubergine slices and layered them in a small baking tin with the pesto and some parmesan .  After this picture was taken I put the tray in the grill for 5 minutes, when it came out it looked far to good for me to even think about taking a picture of it and I just ate it from the tin.

Back with a vengeance

Hey nobody but me.....

After a month during which I have cooked lots and blogged none I am back, hoping that soon enough someone may find a tiny bit of culinary inspiration from me.  This month I have spent a lot of time cooking recipes from Jane Grigson's English food.  So much so that it has earned pride of place in my cubby hole kitchen.

Strange as it may sound the Cucumber Ragout was a particular success.  So much so that I feel compelled to put down the recipe:

2 cucumbers sliced (unpeeled)
2 medium onions sliced
unsalted butter
8 tbsp chicken stock
3 tbsp dry white wine
salt, pepper, mace
2 rounded tsp flour


To start melt some butter in two pans and brown the onions in one and the cucumber in the other, you don't need to cook them through at this stage just give them some colour.  Drain the vegetables and then put them in a saucepan with the stock, wine and seasoning.  Cover the saucepan tightly and simmer until vegetables are cooked (about 10mins).  Mash together the flour with some butter and then slowly add the mush to thicken the sauce.  Thats it, all done (except for the multitude of pans to wash up but get someone else to do that).  Serve with grilled chicken or pork...YUM!





 

50 great curries of india

I made the first of the 50 Great Curries of India today and have to say I am VERY pleased with the result.  I bought this cookbook for my mum a few years ago and very quickly stole it back (mostly for its pictures of exceptionally yummy traditional looking curries).  I re-discovered it again earlier this week after not being that impressed with the concept of 'Curry Easy'.  I decided that kaalee mirch cha mutton was the dish for me (commonly known as lamb with herbs and black pepper) a curry that originates from the Konkan coast, north of Goa.

The recipe was dependant on the making of a green paste of mint, coriander, raw cashew nuts, coconut and chilli (the recipe said 6, common sense said 2...common sense won) blended to a paste in the food processor and set aside.  In the meantime I fried some onions in some oil flavoured with cardamom, cinnamon and cloves and browned off the lamb (a rare breed, bought from Borough Market on Friday) along with some garlic and ginger. The dry spices were added and all the fat rendered off the meat made a lovely spicy gravy in the pan.  At this point the recipe stated I added 'whipped full fat yoghurt', I have to admit I didn't really understand how much it needed to be whipped but I added it bit by bit and the yoghurt combined with the gravy quite well. I then mixed in the green paste and simmered the curry for 40 mins.  Despite having a rubbish food processor that probably didn't make my paste smooth enough, the finished product was a thick, moreish and moderately hot curry that I will be definitely making again.

Day 1...an Indian feast to come home to

Ok so I have had my first kitchen upset.  Why is opening a bag of frozen peas difficult for me! Never mind I'm sure there is some therapeutic benefit to picking up half frozen peas off the kitchen floor; forgetting at least one, for me to tread on, barefoot in the middle of the night.

The Delia of Indian cooking!

So my task for today was to try out some of the recipes from my newest cook book: Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy (purchased yesterday).  The cook book is lovely, despite Madhur Jaffrey always making me cringe when I see her cook live on TV.  I decided that I would make Chicken Karhai with Mint as well as a Pea and Mushroom Curry.  Chicken Karhai, according to Mrs Jaffrey, is marinated chicken thighs fried in an 'Indian Wok' with onions and mint.  Sounds lovely, and relatively simple to make, bonus!  So as I type my chicken thighs are marinating in some lovely spices (black pepper, cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper and ginger).  In the meantime I thought I would make the Pea and Mushroom curry.

I was quite comfortable with the recipe as I have been making my own curry pastes for a while now.  I love roasting the spices and using a pestle and mortar to grind them.  I couldn't get hold of any Cremini mushrooms so had to make do with plain regular closed cup ones.  Everything was going well until I added the advised amount of salt...uh oh, that is way to salty for me, especially as the curry reduced for 30 minutes after I added it.  Next time I make this curry I think I will add salt at the end, not at the beginning as instructed in the recipe, the flavour is too harsh for me.  A little bit of sugar might save it later on when I reheat it for dinner.

That's my cooking done for the afternoon, only some last minute frying and some basmati rice to cook before my hard working fiancée gets home.  I'm working till late tomorrow and Thursday so propably won't be cooking again till the weekend.  Until then.

Slightly excited, slightly scared!

My cooking addiction is spiralling out of control and my friends are fed up of listening so I guess cyberspace is stuck with me for the foreseeable future.  I am a self confessed foodie and wannabe fantastic home cook with a lot to learn.  And, yes, the italics are necessary (especially when it comes to baking).

The inspiration for 'Across the Chopping Board' is the feeling you get when you are on holiday eating a local dish and think to yourself "I need to try and make this when I get home".  With the help of my partner in crime Nat (fellow foodie and photographer extraordinaire)  we want to spend the next few months experimenting with flavours and sharing our love of cooking (and tasting) food from all around the globe.  In the future we hope to have created an A-Z full of recipes from exotic destinations as well as ones close to our heart and our home.

We realise in the process of becoming "accomplished cooks" (something I am very far from at the moment) there will be mistakes, perhaps even the occasional cooking disaster.  As long as we don't burn down the kitchen, and I would like to point out that to successfully burn down our kitchen would require a very small fire, we will persevere.