Lamb & fennel meatballs with rag pasta

Well this one is hot off the press!  We had this for dinner this evening and it was so good, I had to commit the recipe to the blog before I forgot what I'd done.  Yes, it's a Jenny Eatwell original, so mind you remember that when you're telling all your friends.   *wink*

In actual fact, the germ of inspiration came from a news article regarding an Italian restaurant.  I forget where the restaurant was, but in the article they showed a dish of meatballs with "rag" pasta.  This one was completely new to me and required some further investigation - and it turns out that recipes involving "rag" pasta are all over the internet.  It is only a wonder that I haven't tripped over one before!

So what is "rag" pasta?  It's such a simple thing!  You take a fresh lasagne sheet (egg pasta preferably) and cut it into random shapes.  Tadaaaaa!  Rag pasta.  Now I do remember seeing Gennaro Contaldo making something with randomly shaped flat pasta in the past, but hadn't connected it with "rag" pasta.  I decided to cut mine into triangles, but you can be as random as you like, so long as the shapes are roughly the same size so that they cook at the same speed.

I will admit, however, that once I combined the pasta with the sauce it looked rather flat and uninviting.  Hubby was looking at it most dubiously and I suddenly lost all confidence in my lovely tasty sauce that I'd been quietly rhapsodising over only minutes before.

I made the mistake of serving it on flat plates - it would have looked so much better in a bowl with a little sprinkle of some herb or another - parsley probably - to give a brighter green.  Everything looks inviting with some parsley sprinkled over it!

Having dashed off the three photographs (why didn't I take more?) I ventured into the sitting room where hubby and son were tucking in.  Well?  How was it eating?  "Do you know," said hubby, in amazement, "this is actually really very good!".

Really?  I mean, there, I told you it would be lovely.  ~Koff~  He was right, as well.  It ate very nicely indeed.  The pasta wasn't chewy, or flabby, the meatballs were just right size wise and yes, you could taste the fennel seed.  The sauce was just the right consistency and perfect amounts of it.  Gosh!  I'd only gone and conjured up a family favourite.

So here I am, dashing off a quick blog post so that you, too, can enjoy some "rag" pasta with your families.

Now, for the cook's notes, I've a couple :

-  firstly, make sure to use full fat creme fraiche.  Low fat just won't work and will split once you bring it up to the boil.

-  Secondly, any old stock will do (other than fish, of course!), so don't worry if you don't have any lamb stock cubes or powder in the cupboard.

-  It is very worth crushing the fennel seed before adding it to the meatballs, as getting a seed stuck between your teeth can ruin the best of meals.

For those who might be counting calories, this amounts to roughly 1,161 calories per portion (which is the entire amount divided between three people).  However, it is an entire meal on the one plate, so long as you make sure to have a light breakfast and lunch.  Of course, you could always serve it with a salad and split it between four people, which would reduce the calories a bit!

Happy munching!


LAMB & FENNEL MEATBALLS WITH RAG PASTA    (serves 3)

Ingredients :

500g minced lamb
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp sumac
half a tsp garlic granules
1 large banana shallot, one half chopped finely, the other sliced finely
1 tbsp olive oil
200g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
200ml lamb (or veal, or chicken) stock
300ml full fat creme fraiche
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
half a tsp dried thyme
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
300g fresh egg lasagne pasta sheets, cut into 2" triangles
50g tenderstem broccoli
20g peas.

Method :

1.  With a pestle and mortar, crush the fennel seed with a pinch of salt.  Then into a large bowl, mix together the minced lamb, crushed fennel seed, sumac, pepper, garlic granules and the finely chopped half of banana shallot.

2.  Wet your hands and shape the mixture into small meatballs - about the size of a cherry tomato.

3.  Heat a deep frying pan and add the olive oil. Once hot, add the meatballs and fry on a high heat until lightly browned, but just cooked through. Remove from the pan and reserve. Tip away all but 1 tablespoonful of the oil.

4.  Add the remaining finely sliced half of banana shallot and sliced mushrooms and fry gently until softened.

5.  Return the meatballs to the pan and add the lamb stock, creme fraiche, Worcestershire sauce plus thyme and season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to the boil and reduce until you have a thickened sauce (around 10-15 minutes).

6.  In the meantime, bring a deep pot of water to the boil and once boiling, add the pasta pieces. Cook until tender - approx. 3-4 minutes.

7.  Add the tenderstem broccoli to the sauce, making sure to submerge it so that it cooks evenly. Cook for around 7-8 minutes, then add the petits pois and cook until heated through and tender.

8.  When the pasta is done, drain and add the pasta to the sauce. Toss in the sauce to coat - and serve into warmed bowls.

Printable version

"Turn the meal plan for this week over to me" he said ...

... and because I don't particularly like Bernard Matthews Turkey Steaks, I didn't.  *chuckle*

However, I did let hubby take the lead on this week's menu plan - only reserving the right of veto over things like putting two major carbohydrates together in a tart case.

My very favourite meal when we lived in Germany

I think we've wound up with an interesting combination of meals.  Although, our first choice for Tuesday (Bockwurst & Kartoffelsalat - a german sausage with german potato salad) had to be dropped at the shopping stage.  For starters, we couldn't find the Jelly potatoes that we've been lapping up (they're only available in some Tesco stores, which obviously weren't the four we went to) and secondly, the supermarket(s) we were in hadn't ever heard of Bockwurst.  ~rolls eyes~

So we wound up with pizza.  Desperation struck, I'm afraid.

Retro - but flipping gorgeous!

Regrettably, I think we're going to have to re-think Sunday's Beef Olives, too.  We weren't sure what cut of beef to get - and decided upon Sirloin - but the price for the quantity we're going to need - even downgrading the cut - is just prohibitive.

I'd quite like to do a pot roast of Brisket or maybe a Chicken, but done in the Slow Cooker.  I'm really not sure about that one yet, I will have to ponder it further - but I've got time for that.

So, what does the menu plan look like?  Why, like this ...

Tue : was Bockwurst & Kartoffelsalat, became pizza

Weds : Rissoles, baked Sweet Potatoes with chilli lime cream, plus peas.

Thurs : Hearty Pasta Soup and Soda Bread

Fri : Smoked Haddock & Fennel Tart with Greek salad

Sat : Chicken kebabs with salsa & greek yoghurt in pitta bread

Sun : Beef or Chicken with potatoes of some kind, broccoli, carrots & peas.

Mon : Meatballs and pasta.

Because the majority of the dishes are hubby's ideas, he is inevitably doing a fair amount of the cooking.  It is difficult to take an idea and not convert it to your view of "how it should be" as he will obviously have a picture in his mind of how he wants the dish to turn out.  As we don't have the technology to be able to download these pictures for public consumption, he's going to have to cook them!

How I imagine Rissoles to look

Case in point being tonight's Rissoles.  Now I can't ever remember eating a Rissole.  Not the kind of Rissoles that he has been speaking about - made with lamb or beef mince, coated in seasoned flour and fried.  For hubby, however, this is part of his childhood and not only does he have a picture in his head, but also the memory of a flavour - which I have neither.  I'm intrigued to find out about these Rissoles, having heard a fair amount about them over the years!

Because of their potential for being high fat, we've decided on having a baked sweet potato with the lovely chilli/lime cream dressing.  For all that it's sour cream based, I'm quite sure there's less fat involved than using a great dollop of butter - and with the green peas to accompany them, hopefully a balance will have been struck.

Picture c/o BBC Good Food website

The Hearty Pasta Soup is my choice and it is a BBC Good Food recipe that I've known about for (literally) years and have put on the menu a couple of times, but each time it's been bumped off and I've never got to make it.  So, I'm having another go.  I was hoping to be able to get some of the walnut & blue cheese tortelloni (which is double yum) to be included in the soup, but  - probably because I was after some - there was none in the shop.  I settled on a spicy sausage tortellini that I'm hoping will have some flavour.  So many of these filled pastas are just little knots of flavourless Plasticine, but I'm hoping that due to the "spicy" aspect these will be different.  I'm looking forward to it - and I will be making some soda bread rolls to eat with it.

Eggs, versus ...

Friday's Smoked Haddock and Fennel Tart is a concept that came about through exhaustive brainstorming one evening.  I do so enjoy making tarts and can't quite decide - in this instance - whether to go down the "eggy quiche" route with it, or deviate into a "white sauce" route.  I know both the fish and fennel will be happy in a thick white sauce that has the fish poaching milk used in it along with maybe some herb or another (possibly parsley & the ferny fronds from the top of the fennel) and perhaps a light sprinkling of cheddar over the top that will melt when baked in the oven (sounds gorgeous).  However, the eggy quiche route is a much more reliable route to the final product.  You know, I can feel an inexorable pull towards the white sauce going on.

....... white sauce?

I think (hope!) that it would be nice when paired with a Greek salad of large sliced tomatoes, cucumber, olives and red onion with a sprinkling of Feta cheese - but is that too much cheese for the fish?  Hmmn, possibly.  We might have to lose the Feta, if so!

Saturday's Chicken Kebabs is another brainchild of hubby's.  He's envisaging strips of chicken that have been marinaded in lemon, thyme & olive oil, laced onto skewers with alternating pieces of courgette, cherry tomatoes, mushroom, aubergine and possibly apple.  He's proposing to grill them (maybe in the char grill pan, I'm not sure) and then once done, release them into a pitta bread.  Slosh on some Greek yoghurt and some suitably tasty salsa and you're done.  Sounds pretty darned yummy, to me.


I touched on Sunday's dinner earlier - and since then I notice that our local butcher is doing whole chickens for around £2.50!  Even if they're tiny little things, for that price we could get two.  I'm contemplating having a crack at jointing the chicken(s), which is something I've never done but would be interested at having a go at.  I'm assuming it'd be easier with a smaller chicken and I know my "Big Knife" (as it's known) is man enough for the job, it just depends on whether I've got the oomph to push it through a chicken!

Monday's meatballs and pasta is going to be an interesting one.  Yes, I've been having a bit of a meatball fest just lately - but I spotted a bag of frozen meatballs in Asda the other day, for a very affordable £1.55 for 500g of cook from frozen.  Now my guess is that these are going to be parlous as best and inedible at worst, but they've just got to be tested.  They purport to be 80% beef and have an encouragingly short ingredients list that doesn't appear to contain anything that would make your eyebrows lift in horror.


I'll be making a lovely powerful tomato sauce (possibly with a little chilli) to put them in and we'll have some grated cheese to sprinkle over the pasta.  It's rather like having your favourite curry the first time you use a new Indian takeaway, just to test what they're like.  Before I try doing anything startling with them, let's try them with a bog-standard sauce and get their measure.  I'm sure you'll hear, whatever the results are!


Apart from that, I still have three types of packeted rice pudding to try out (we tried the chocolate one the other day) and report back on.

I am STILL intending on cooking the Dorset Apple Cake - and had better get cracking on it, because the Bramleys I bought for it are slowly getting older and older!


I've also entered a Watercress Soup competition - so I'll soon be trialling a few recipes before deciding on my potential competition winner.  It's a good job son & heir is out for 5 lunches out of 7, as he'd probably leave home if faced with successive bowls of watercress soup for lunch!


Something else that's going to require some thought is what to cook for National Pie Week!  I'm considering steak and kidney, at the moment.  I do love a good steak & kidney pie, but it needs to contain loads of lovely pieces of kidney as well as be in a luscious rich beefy gravy.  Goodness, I've just made my own mouth water!  It is just such a good job that you can't put weight on by just thinking about food - I hope.

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Meatballs in a Thai style sauce

I am very pleased to report that our summary failure with the Gnocchi did nothing to shake hubby's enthusiasm for his meatball dish.

The meatballs themselves were made from some Cumberland sausages bought from our local butchers.  It's just an easy matter of unzipping the sausage (or taking it out of it's skin) and breaking off chunks which are then formed into balls.  Job done!

He put some basmati rice on to cook and made an omelette to cube up and include in the rice when it was done.  In the last couple of minutes of cooking the rice, he added some frozen peas for colour and to provide a sweetness in the rice.

The thai-style sauce was provided by melting a knob of butter in a deep frying pan and sweating a couple of shallots until they were transparent.  Then, the Red Thai Curry Paste was added and cooked on for a minute or two before adding a tin of coconut milk.

The raw meatballs were then added and poached in the sauce until cooked.  You couldn't get away with doing this with cheap sausagemeat because of the fat content, but our butcher's sausages have little or no fat.  Towards the end, a handful or two of baby sweetcorn that had been cut into small pieces was added to the pan to cook through.

The end result was good looking, but a tiny bit confused as it didn't really know whether it was Thai, Italian or Chinese.  Hubby's intention with this recipe was to create something that was a) quick to cook, b) tasty and c) interesting.  Well, he certainly scored with the first one.  As to whether it was tasty or not, yes it was - but there was just something missing or out of place.  I suspect it was the very British sausage which had no place in a Thai sauce.  I felt they would have been perfect in an Amatriciana sauce with pasta, or if you were after something less predictable, perhaps in a Mexican chilli sauce.  For me, the sausage and the sauce did clash a little bit.  Which doesn't mean that it wasn't tasty!

As for being interesting, well, I suspect we've talked more about this recipe and it's adjustments than any other!  I think that next time, he's going to go down the Mexican route.  These sausage meatballs are really too good to not have again - just in the right context, this time!

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Tuesday preview of the week to come

Gosh, where did the last week go?  We don't try to have the days fly past - but they do - and seemingly quicker and quicker as I get older!  Makes me wonder if perhaps one reaches an age where the days begin to slow down, or if they just continue to disappear at the rate of knots.  

So. I've yet to post about the Pot Roast Chicken, which is largely because it forms the bulk of the post I have written for the Bournemouth Echo's "Taste" supplement, so I'll post to here once they have released it.  Suffice to say it was something of a revelation, but you'll just have to wait to discover why.

For the coming week, I was primarily concerned with price.  We're still feeling the pinch from the disruption to our cash flow and consequently we're pedalling hard to catch up.  Spending over the budget on food is definitely not on the agenda at the moment.  In fact, the closer I can get the Tuesday shopping to £40, the happier I'll be.  Today's shopping came to £45, so we almost hit the target.

£5.25 per 1kg
The thing is, they aren't even
nice!

You won't find any recipes involving king prawns, or beef, or lamb or any loveliness like that - in fact, you won't find any frozen chicken involved in our menu either.  Have you seen the price it has suddenly shot up to?  We were shocked - and our Chicken Curry was abandoned which led to a spur of the moment choice which I'm sure the boys will be happy with, but leaves a bit to be desired where both nutrition and gastronomy are concerned.  In fact, all the meals where Hubby is cooking, appear to be "straight from the freezer" meals which are certainly cheap, but that's about where it finishes.  I understand why we have chosen these meals and I know that we have little choice in the matter right now, but it is disappointing when you're trying to steer clear of processed meats and high fat foods.  I can only think that we're going to have to buy a whole fresh chicken and joint it up - which bizarrely, was cheaper!

So, the week to come is looking like this :

Home made chicken pie, with illicit yorkies and, right to left
at back - swede & carrot mash, plus broccoli and peas.

Tuesday : home made Chicken Pie with mashed carrot & swede, plus peas and broccoli.

The chicken for this pie is the other half of the pot roast chicken.  I thought it would be interesting to see how the leftover chicken reacted to a) being cold and b) being heated again by being put in a pie.  I can confirm that, as cold chicken, it was deliciously moist and would have been completely divine in a Coronation Chicken, or a humungous chicken salad.  Once heated and put in the pie, it had none of the "leftovers" taste of roast chicken, but was deliciously flavoured by the stock it had been cooked in - which I used to make the gravy for the pie.  So that is all good!

I absolutely love mashed carrot & swede - particularly when the carrots are sweet.  Mashed with a little butter and a lot of black pepper, it is just so rewarding to eat.  Because of the pastry involved in the pie, I wasn't going to bother with any other form of carbohydrate so no potatoes, however some leftover pre-made Yorkshire Puddings just happened to creep in.  ~Looks hard at hubby~  The carrot & swede, plus broccoli and peas were ample, but the yorkies were nice to have anyway. The only point I felt needed work was the gravy within the pie, which became much more liquid as the pie cooked.  I'll have to make sure the gravy is a lot thicker, next time!

Note "real meat" sign
What else would they be?
~shudder~

Wednesday : Meatballs with parsnip, carrot, peas & broccoli in a giant Yorkshire Pudding.

Yes, it's yorkshire pudding again.  Don't ask me how, but we've wound up with the stuff on the menu twice - and with the extra-curricular yorkies in Tuesday's dinner making three times, I suspect we'll just have to avoid it for a while hereafter!

The meatballs are the pre-prepared Swedish Meatballs, which are on special offer at the moment, at £1 a pack.  The vegetables are all the leftovers from other meals, so we didn't have to buy any specifically for this meal.  For all that they smell disgusting, the Swedish Meatballs hold a place in my heart as they were the only thing that my little dog Ginny would eat, following some surgery many years ago.  They brought her back from the dead, and for that I will always be grateful to them.  However, I wouldn't want to experience them on the menu too often - there had to be a reason why dogs like them so much!

Thursday : Fish in breadcrumbs, potato waffles and peas.

Call this a D.I.Y. fish & chips.  Well, it uses up the six waffles we've got lurking in the fridge!

Picture from Good Food Channel
Bet mine won't look like that!

Friday : Sausages with Pasta Ratatouille Bake.

Now this is a new one.  No, not the sausages - they're old friends.  Incidentally, we've discovered that we can no longer stomach Asda sausages and have defected to Sainsbury's.  Sainsbury's common-or-garden sausages aren't the best by a long chalk, but they're still streets ahead of the hard, tasting of bicarb and not a lot else, miserable offerings from Asda.

The Pasta Ratatouille Bake is one of the Good Food Channel's recipes.  It involves lovely things like fresh tomatoes, courgettes, broad beans and oodles of parmesan cheese - so we'll be getting some of our five-a-day.  Here's hoping it turns out as nice as it sounds!

Saturday : Kabanos Pasta & Garlic Bread.

This one is an interesting recipe that I really don't know how it will come out.  The Kabanos are Polish sausages somewhere inbetween Chorizo and Kielbasa.  I've bought the authentic Polish versions of them (our Asda stocks a number of authentic Polish ingredients) and, as the recipe includes tomatoes, garlic, chilli flakes with single cream and parmesan, it will be a bit of a leap of faith!

Incidentally, in case you're wondering about the Parmesan - knowing that it is normally quite pricey - we've discovered that Asda sell a small block for some £2.25 which will usually last around four to five servings.  If you divide that into the price - it doesn't turn out too bad.  Well, not when you consider the return you get in flavour!

Sunday : Toad in the hole, carrots, swede, green beans and peas.

Yes, here comes the old yorkshire pudding again.  *sigh*  I really must try not to do this again in future!  Still, this one will be home-made - and if you knew how hard I have tried to make a decent yorkshire pudding that rises how it's supposed to, tastes good and doesn't languish like a thick coating of latex, you'd be wishing me good luck with it!

I'm quite determined that ONE DAY, I'll be able to produce a yorkshire pudding that a Yorkshire housewife would be proud of.  I've even bought a new roasting tin, especially for the job.

Monday : Chicken Portions with vegetable rice.

These are the spur-of-the-moment fallback position from the Chicken Curry that didn't happen owing to price.  I can't actually remember which flavours Hubby picked up - but they are the "in breadcrumbs, munched up and stuck back together again" chicken portions, rather than pieces of "real" chicken.  While they are okay, I'll be secretly looking forward to the vegetable rice.  But ssshhhhh - don't tell anyone!  *chuckle*

Tuesday again and the new week's menu is up!

Oh, I had such a job organising this week's menu list!  I had two dishes that I really wanted to do, but after that .. nothing.

In a "usual" week, I cook on a Tues/Fri/Sat/Sun and hubby cooks on a Wed/Thurs/Mon.

This routine has come about because I ordinarily work on the days when hubby cooks - he's good enough to relieve me of the task of setting to after what can, some days, be a somewhat brain boggling day (well, 4 hours) at work.  For those of you reading this who are thinking "four hours?  She's got it made!", can I just say that I've done my time of working from 8.30am through to 8.30pm and it darned near killed me at the time and having very nearly been given my honorary harp and cloud again, some two years ago, four hours three days a week is plenty for me thankyou.

Anyway, I digress.

So there I was with five day left to fill, two of which were "my" days.  I immediately consulted my "Recipes I haven't tried yet, but want to" folder and found one candidate.  That left my "Tried and Tested Recipes" folder, where I found another admirable candidate.  Next stop was hubby, to see what he fancied cooking.  Unfortunately, he had even less idea than I did (which is odd, because normally we've each got at least two recipes hovering on the background).  One day was easily filled owing to our local Supermarket having meatballs on special offer.  The next was a stroke of brilliance on hubby's part.  Having suggested the age-old Chilli Con Carne (*groan*), he had the bright idea of making some Cornbread to go along with it instead of the rice.  What a cracking idea!  I used to make Cornbread a few years ago and I loved it, especially with Chilli.  So that was a definite.  That just left one day to fill.  We pondered on what we'd got lurking in the cupboards, what was on special offer at the supermarket - trying desperately to find something other than the ubiquitous Spaghetti Bolognese, which is our usual fallback position.  After much deliberation as to the relative merits of home-made -v- shop bought, (price -v- quality, the usual story), we opted for the price argument and decided to have shop bought Cornish Pasties.  Hey ho!

So, here's what we're having this week :

Tues : (today) Smoked Haddock Chowder.  This is just a bowl full of gorgeousness, which I'll blog about during the week.

Wed : Cornish Pasties, potato waffles and beans.  Ah well, at least hubby and son like them!

Thurs : Chilli and Cornbread.  Yay!

Fri : Prawn & Peanut noodles.  I've a few reservations over this one, but I've put my trust in BBC Good Food and hopefully it'll be lovely.  If nothing else, it'll soothe my desire for a noodle stir fry!

Sat : Honey & Lemon Chicken, carrots, peas & broccoli.  Oooh, now this is a really delicious meal, which uses two lemons together with chicken portions and potatoes.  Everything comes out all caramelised and sticky.  Makes my mouth water just thinking about it!

Sun : Pot Roast Chicken, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots and peas.  I've never done a pot roast chicken, so now's my chance!

Mon : Meatballs and Spirali Pasta.  It's a meatball, tomato and cheesefest.  Who wouldn't like it?

Failure on the compatibility front

Lancaster & Spitfire at Bournemouth's Air Festival 2010

I know the aircraft don't have anything to do with food, but I liked the photograph so much, and it's representative of what was going on over the week!

This blog post first appeared in the Bournemouth Echo's online pages, here.

Well, I can safely say that I had a collection of really nice dinners this week – well, all excepting the Sicilian Style Fish Stew, but more of that later. However, I’m not really sure that the remainder of my family enjoyed them so much.

Son's bowl of chowder, complete with bite missing from bread.
(Photograph taken by son)

We kicked off the week with a Smoked Haddock Chowder, which always goes down well with everyone. This was no exception and made a great start to the week.

Next came what was billed on the Menu as “Tuna & Sweetcorn Salad” and was one of Hubby’s cooking nights. However, it transmogrified into a Tuna Salad Nicoise (albeit made with tinned tuna) and was really gorgeous. I loved the lemon vinaigrette dressing on the salad leaves and with some crusty bread, it made a handsome meal. Unfortunately, our son has decided that he doesn’t like tuna any more. This is peculiar as tinned tuna was, along with fish fingers, the denomination of fish we used to get him started with eating it. He will now eat most types, other than smoked mackerel – and tuna, now it seems. Darn! Foiled again.

We soldiered on and menu item no.3 appeared, which was Meatballs & Pasta. Now we’ve both made meatballs in various incarnations and with varying levels of success, to the point where now we can’t really face the lengthy process of mixing and rolling the little devils, nor the difficulty of finding room in the fridge for them to chill. I seriously think that other people must have two fridges, or alternatively nothing in their fridge to begin with. However, Hubby had come up with a blinder of an idea, which was to use some “extra special” sundried tomato & herb beef burgers which he broke into meatball sized pieces, rolled into a ball and hey presto – meatballs. What a triumph! I can recommend this procedure to all those Mums & Dads out there who are also suffering from meatball making fatigue. Perfect.

You’re probably all thinking “well, that all sounds successful, what’s she on about?”. You see, it all began to go downhill from hereon in.

 Next up on the menu list was the “Sicilian-style fish stew” for which I’d bought some fresh cod fillets and frozen them in advance. Never again. We have now decided that recipes including fresh fish shall only ever feature on a Tuesday or a Friday (both of which are shopping days, and don’t require the fish to be frozen).

Looks innocent enough, doesn't it?

The dish looks a picture, and indeed I really enjoyed the broth, but the fish tasted muddy and not right and the red kidney beans were like bullets, so much so that Hubby and I both got worn out trying to chomp our way through them. Hubby declared his portion inedible and son managed to do his best with it, but more went into the bin than ever got eaten. Still, one bright note was that the brown crusty rolls we had with it, were yummy!

Saturday’s dinner was Braised Chicken & beans, served with a carrot/swede mash. I chose this one, because we were keen to try a few dishes that used white wine, and this one did. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our usual standard of chicken breast and had to settle for the supermarket’s own brand, which was salty, watery and rubbery. Not a good start. Hubby declared the carrot/swede mash inedible, although neither son nor I could detect any problem with it. Son found himself somewhat challenged by the white wine in the sauce, but I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner – problems with the chicken excepted.

Owing to the failure of the last few dinners and the dismal day, I’d decided to make the most of our crop of rhubarb in the garden and made a Rhubarb Cobbler. It isn’t the standard type of cobbler, with “cobbles” placed upon the rhubarb and baked, it is a type where you mix together a batter (made with – American cup sizes – half a cup of sugar, half a cup of plain flour, half a cup of milk, 1 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt) and pour it over the rhubarb. I cooked the rhubarb for 3-4 minutes in the microwave, with a couple of tablespoons of sugar added, then poured the batter mix on top and baked at 180deg (fan) for 35-40 mins. The result is almost like a sponge, but with a gorgeously chewy texture. Add that to our beautiful rhubarb, and everyone had forgotten their dissatisfaction with their first course.

I can only hope that if the Sausage & Lentil Casserole I have planned for tomorrow goes wrong, the family is as easily cheered up by the Pineapple I’ve got for dessert!