Monday Morning

The dishwasher’s working again! It was repaired on Friday by a charming chap who didn’t really seem to know what he was doing, but made it happen anyway. It’s a delight not to have to be concerned about how much washing up I create while cooking. I did some fish cakes for dinner (river cobbler, prawns, mashed potato, shallot, tarragon) which were lovely.

We went shooting on Saturday morning; I was disappointed with my score, but (as usual) I missed some early targets through over-enthusiasm! Oh well.

Saturday evening we had a slightly indulgent dinner: Smoked oysters

1.    Piedmont peppers (red peppers filled with tomatoes, anchovy, garlic & roasted) served with slices of baguette.

2.    Steak & Chips, with asparagus and a mushroom & mustard sauce and fried new potatoes

3.    Cheese

4.    Crème Brulée (Alison makes the world’s best, IMHO)

It was a good meal. The peppers were, frankly, a little over cooked, so had to be trimmed, but still tasted fantastic. The (rump) steaks were tender – I subscribe to Heston’s method of cooking, i.e. turning every 30 seconds and leaving to rest for a minimum of 15 minutes) and the other bits were fine, too. We had champagne and a red wine from Domaine Laborie in the Languedoc to go with this.

Sunday we entertained my elderly (92 year old) mother to lunch. It was a lovely sunny day so we were able to sit outside for aperitifs (champagne again!). Then I served fried sea bass (a super crispy skin aided by dipping in seasoned flour and frying in very hot rapeseed oil – mother discarded this!) new potatoes, asparagus (you may notice a theme here – English asparagus, because of the very short growing season, is undoubtedly the tastiest in the world) new potatoes (Charlotte) and a parsley & shallot sauce. Alison made Eton Mess for dessert. It was tasty and seemed to go down well with Mum.