A Simple Lunch

The simplest of lunches – spoils from the market, served up minutes after arriving home. Fresh, crusty bread sliced thickly and served with tomatoes, fresh goat cheese and wild boar sausage.






And to finish: fresh blueberries.

Black Treacle

I love these tins. I refuse to throw them out. I'm starting a collection. Soon I'll start taking them back to Canada as gifts and people will love me.

Freddie's Calzones

I read a lot of food blogs. I probably have 30 RSS feeds that update me of any action on the blog front. I don't actually read read them all- who has that much time, really? But I like to look at the headlines, see what's up and click through to posts that catch my fancy.

I always click through to The Great Vegetable Challenge.
Seriously, love the premise of this blog- get a kid to eat his vegetables by going through the alphabet and trying everything twice. They are trying vegetables I've always picked up and then put down in favour of something more familiar and ones I've never even heard of!

When it came to sweet potatoes they made fries (8 out of 10) and sweet potato calzones. Which sounded really good, and pretty easy and well, we had a sweet potato and so I made them for lunch one afternoon. And they were really good- a neat blend of flavours, sweet potato, salty cheese, herby pesto. Lovely.

Freddie's sister (who has great hair) has a recipe for asparagus twists that I'm going to try this weekend.

Market Vegetables

Saturdays are by far my favourite day here in London. Not only is it a day to spend traipsing about London, but it means a trip to Broadway Market (Leah's written about the market before). Once we've had a bite to eat, picked up bread, and had some brilliant coffee, we then decide what produce to buy. This is usually a random, higgledy-piggledy affair and involves us trying to figure out what we'll eat over the coming week. Needless to say, it's always interesting.

Absolutely beautiful, vibrant (and highly photogenic!), fresh rhubarb. I couldn't resist. Leah made crumble (one of my favourites) and delicate, little tarts. Sadly, rhubarb is quickly being replaced by English asparagus which has just come into season, but I'm hoping we'll find some more this Saturday.

A lovely, purple flowering broccoli which, sadly, was forgotten and rescued from the back of the fridge half-way through the week. Although not much worse for wear, it had lost some of its original crispness and as such, was eaten with a simple, lovely pasta. If anyone has suggestions on how to cook it, please leave a note in the comments.

Gorgeous, crusty cheese which was eaten with crackers, cornichons and bits of spicy salami. We typically end up browsing and grazing at the market's many food stalls, so this was the perfect snack once we'd come back from the market.

And lastly, luscious green beans. These were prepared simply and delicious, letting the flavour of the beans come through. Quickly blanched and then tossed them in a French mustard dressing. Brilliant.

A Simple Roast Eggplant

Came home on Thursday night to a fridge full of food. That doesn't happen very often because we're usually down to the dredges by mid week, anticipating the market on the weekend. Anyways, among the veggies was a lone, lovely eggplant.

I sliced it in half, did the salt rinse thing, then scored it quite deeply, covered it in olive oil and stuck slices of garlic in the cuts. Some sea salt, a hot oven til golden and tender, followed by a sprinkling of parmesan. We ate it standing around the stove and it was delicious.

Incidentally, Nigel Slater says that aubergine is the sexiest vegetable.