Wednesday - one of the most disgusting meals ever!

Today I went for lunch with an ex-colleague at the University of Birmingham, where I used to work. There’s a place there called ‘Staff House’ intended for use by the Faculty and postgraduate students. I ate there many times while I was both student and Faculty member; generally the food was adequate and reasonably cheap.

Today, I had the most appalling dish: it was supposed to be a cheese, cauliflower and macaroni bake (i.e. macaroni & cheese, really). It was vile! The sauce had curdled and split, the macaroni was cooked to a mush, the cheese had been so over-heated that it was oil and curds and there was no discernible cauliflower. I left 90% of it My companion had carvery pork that was so tough that she couldn’t cut it, let alone eat it.

Still the purpose of the meeting was to catch-up and eating was secondary. However, it would take me a lot to go back there.

Staff House, hang you heads in shame!

Monday - Breakfast for Dinner

I came back from the local supermarket with a nice piece of un-dyed smoked haddock. There’s a number of things I regularly do with this, such as risotto or fishcakes (with breadcrumbs rather than mashed potato, much lighter), but I felt like a change.

So, I decided on kedgeree. This dish originates in India (apparently from the 14^th Century!) and was probably brought to England by returning members of the Raj. Certainly, in Victorian times it was a ‘posh’ breakfast dish.

The recipe is simple, though there are many variations online. Mine is based on onion cooked in (a lot) of butter with curry powder, crushed cardamom and chilli + rice and smoked haddock of course. I also add parsley and coriander leaf if I’ve got it. Traditionally, it’s garnished with hard-boiled eggs.

The whole dish takes about 30 minutes to complete. I have to say that it was very tasty and seemed to be much appreciated by my beloved.

Most of today has been spent doing the ‘wet’ housework: mopping hard floors and cleaning bathrooms. Not my favourite way of spending the day, but good use of my time, I suppose. Anyway, I can now argue that I haven’t had time to cook, so I’m planning that we go to our local ‘Indian’ (it’s Bangladeshi really) restaurant for dinner. It’s only a few minutes walk.