Old El Passé

Yes. They do go well together. Very well.

You might well think - oh god another food blogger (yes I am), bet she's a right snob when it comes to food. Well, no. I'm not. I like a decent shortcut every now and then, and one of my ultimate comfort dinners is fajitas. From a dinner kit. Yes that one.

But hold your horses and sighs of no-cooking-needed relief. I'm fine with shortcuts but I also love spending time actually cooking, so getting out of the kitchen quickly isn't always a good thing. I tend to embellish every sauce, dinner kit, paste or other shortcut (including Paxo).

Roast dinner leftovers

Forget expensive chicken breasts. On Sunday we had a lovely roast chicken. A roast dinner works out far cheaper and tends to generate some amazing leftovers for the week following - even with our huge appetites. This week we used our chicken in a comforting risotto and, for the first time, risked using it in a fajita dinner kit.

Slow(er) cooking

Quite by accident, my man's late arrival home from the football meant things cooked for far longer in the pan. Turns out slow cooked sliced red onions, green and red peppers, scraps of roast chicken and the fajita seasoning turn into something a bit magical. I threw in a handful of chopped coriander and some diced fresh mini plum tomatoes just to freshen up the mixture. 

Sides

Old El Paso kits miss a key ingredient for any Mexican meal though. Guacamole is so simple to make and I may as well make something a bit authentic to accompany this dinner.

For two people, mash one large ripe avocado. Finely grate about one quarter of a small red onion and half a small clove of garlic. Finely slice some coriander, squeeze in the juice of half a lime and stir through. Season with salt and pepper and finally stir in a little finely chopped red chili and tomato.  

Your kit will come with a just-ok salsa, so if you want it spicy, throw in some chili. If you want it chunky, stir in some fresh tomato. We are a generation of supermarket lovers and these prescribed dinner shortcuts scare us into thinking we can't play with them. We can!  

The result

So we've got slow cooked shredded fajita chicken, fresh guacamole - and I included some leftover watercress and a nice bit of grated cheese in each tortilla. I might have cheated, but I feel anything but guilty.

The perfect brownie

Wow. Just wow. 

Office brownie from The Hummingbird Bakery cookbook lovingly made by Vix from the team.

 

Food hell

On reading the Guardian's article on Britain's most hated foods, I realised that I started something I never finished: my food hell.
Waaaaaaaay back in November 2010 I posted a little something about the evil disguised as food that is Scotch eggs. My opinion stands but this is just the tip of the food hell iceberg.  
Come into my courtroom....

Defendant 1 - Shop bought coleslaw

I'm going to write this under the rationale that everyone has seen Never Been Kissed. You have right? Drew Barrymore being adorable. David Arquette being.... David Arquette. Popular kids and High School nerds. All the usual tripe that gets me scoring films 9/10 on IMDB. 

Well, there's this one scene that fills me with dread, where Arquette's character necks a cafetiere-sized bucket of coleslaw. Shop-bought coleslaw is the food of Satan. Mayonnaise? Mayonnaise my arse. This is salad cream in all its evil genius glory, overbearing and smothering those poor lovely shredded vegetables. They never even had a chance... GUILTY!

Defendant 2 - Brussels sprouts

Damn you Christmas! All I've ever done is love you and yet you delight in tormenting me year on year with these little green bastards. Hidden under roast potatoes for years of my childhood  ("just one Nathalie" - yes just one, but it's ruined the flavour of my mouth for the whole of the 25th December) I'm happy to say I've almost completely rid myself of the enduring terror of the Brussels. Better still, they sell them on trendy sticks nowadays and I can pretend I'm morris dancing. Still, GUILTY!

Defendant 3 -  Cottage cheese

When I googled cottage cheese I ended up looking at a picture of a woman's cellulite-rich thighs. Nuff said. GUILTY!

Defendant 4 - Stilton

You know cheddar cheese? You know when it gets mould on it and you THROW IT IN THE BIN? That. GUILTY CHEESE!

Defendant 5 - Baked beans

Yes, that is Pete Townsend

Many of the comments following the aforementioned article focused on the issue of texture. Mushrooms and bananas prove a huge issue for so many people. I've been there. I hated mushrooms, bananas and, in fact, tomatoes for that very same reason. But flavour won over in the end and I eat all three of these squeaky/hairy weirdos regularly.

Back to baked beans.  I feel a bit peculiar just talking about these. There are enough of these in a tin to mount an army. I can feel the film forming inside my cheeks, I can smell the metallic nasties threatening to be eaten cold in the tin.

You know the way they slowly spread on the plate? Like the mercury puddle in Terminator 2 (or Alex Mack for that matter) they threaten to intoxicate all good fry-ups everywhere. Someone! Anyone! Save my bacon! GUILTY!

Defendant 6 - Egg mayonnaise sandwiches

They stink, and if you eat these in public I probably hate you (a bit). GUILTY!

Defendant 7 - Hersheys chocolate

America. Land  of the plenty. Land of the vomit aftertaste. GUILTY!

I'm not fussy though, honest!

Nx

What's on the menu?

I had to share a fellow food blogger's post, which manages to combine what I do for a living with one of the things I like most. That's food, if you hadn't guessed.

Melissa Loves Food's post What I want from a restaurant website rejects the nonsense (nonsense nonsense!) and embraces simplicity. Enjoy!

Nx

Old spice

Surely a sign of age, I have suddenly become a convert to dark chocolate. That's the sensible person's choice right? 

I am veering away from my family sized bar of Galaxy days and erring towards a respectably-sized bar of Divine 70% dark chocolate. 

Old, wise and bitter.

Nx

Brits abroad

I've just returned from my first ever all inclusive holiday which I spent in beautiful sunny Mexico.

One of the things I most look forward to when jetting off on my hols is - no surprises - the food. This was no exception. Uh, hello? It's Mexican food!

In true Rambo style, Rich bought himself a warm-up burrito the day before the flight, just to line his stomach for the onslaught of pinto beans, various tortilla incarnations and churros we were about to indulge in. We've watched Thomasina Miers banging on in Spanish about what Mexican mama used to make-a, so we think we know what's coming. We're actually rubbing our hands together with anticipation.

But authenticity was not to be. It seems all inclusive means only one thing: Brits abroad. It's beer and chips and that old British favourite - Chinese. 

OK, I'm being slighty harsh. The food was fine. We had a fancy Italian restaurant and an actually rather decent Japanese. But for all the restaraunts on site just one was Mexican. It felt like a dumbed-down version of what the staff would have made at home, outside of this resort, full of plonkers, who wouldn't know a good authentic meal if it punched them in the face.

A lesson learned. We hope to return to beautiful, friendly Mexico one day and, although we might not give up the nice hotel, we'll certainly be venturing a little further into their exciting world of food.  

Mexico - 5, All inclusive - 0.

Nx

Obamarama

Sooooo, Obama likes to be the bearer of birthday cakes. Awesome.
 

A full slideshow of the patisserie president in action can be found at bonappetit.com.

Nx