nigella's keralan fish curry

To be honest despite being quite clearly fish, this is a bit of a cop out as we have it all the time, but on a wet Monday with various resolutions hanging over our heads it's an easy win. Particularly as it'll be a cast iron win with Mr Magic tomorrow.

For some reason it's a bit browner than usual, not sure why though:

Thankfully for the Nigella tag, (currently standing at a mighty ONE dish), Ana's got her eye on a couple of recipes we saw in Lucy's copy of Kitchen over New Year. As luck would have it, Delicious kindly reprinted them in Feb's issue meaning we can try them out without having to buy the whole thing. Fingers-crossed Ana also takes up eating cream horns in her bra, at midnight...

sources
keralan fish curry - Nigella Lawson, Delicious, February 2009, p83

heston's pea & pancetta spaghetti

After yesterday's lolling around (and I do not mean laugh out loud-ing), today we're super-busy as we're off to London's trendy Clapham to search for a new bed for Milo. Not only that, Matt and Virginie are coming over to install our new art in the afternoon - ooooh!

Art installed to Ana's utter delight and satisfaction, and a couple of largish glasses of wine down, we settle for a dinner of Heston's brilliant pea and pancetta spaghetti en familie.

Food of the Milos
Breakfast: fruit and toast nibbles, followed by porridge
Lunch: scrambled eggs
Dinner: pea & pancetta spaghetti

sources
heston's pea & pancetta spaghetti - Waitrose Weekend, 16th September, p10

jill dupleix's white bean polpettine with turmeric potatoes

After a Christmas spent filling up on crisps and sweets, this year we've decided to try and limit Milo's sweet intake to just Saturdays. And/or Sundays depending how we're feeling, oh and crisps on Tuesday's when Ana's got him on her own.

Today is the first day of this regime and it passes off demi successfully. First we all manage to sleep in till 1100, before we knock up a batch of pancakes for brunch, followed by a slow walk into Barnes for a coffee and a play by the pond, via the sweetshop where he buys a packet of Randoms which, incredibly, we're allowed to share.

Even more incredibly the combination of they cycling to the pond, and the good hour of running up and down the wheelchair slope by OSO means he's pretty much zonked by the time we get home. I've only just about got time to blitz all the slightly wilting veg in the fridge into a batch of vegetable bolognese before he sparks out.

This means we've got a long saturday night to enjoy, and what better way than with Jill Dupliex's polpettine - which are essentially mini-bean burgers - and Bill Granger's turmeric potatoes, and our weekend allowance of booze? So burger and chips then...

Even better, ITV3 are showing a season of old Midsomer Murders - hurrah!

Food of the Milos
Because of our late morning, today's routine is all to cock and we miss out lunch entirely, but he fills up on pancakes and pasta instead. It's like he's training for the Tour De France or something.
Brunch: maple syrup pancakes and banana
Dinner: vegetable bolognese and spaghetti, yoghurt

sources
vegetable bolognese - Delicious circa 2005/6, now the Parsley Book
white bean polpettine - Jilly D, the Parsley Book
turmeric-spiced potatoes - Bill Granger, Holiday, p191

mediterranean halloumi salad & arancini balls

Another day of Nursery/School for Milo and Ana means I've got another day relatively unscathed in my sickbed. Today's highlights include tottering off to the chemist for more drugs, going back to my youth and reading Mr Midshipman Hornblower, and finally pasting the pile of outstanding recipe clippings into various notebooks.

For lunch I decide to use up Milo's leftover risotto and attempt to make arancini, or fried risotto balls if you're not Italian. I found a recipe in Donna Hay ages ago but lacking both mozzarella and a deep-fat fryer, I convert the essence of her recipe into small, red, slightly gooey balls of rice. They were okay to be honest, and beat having soup for three days running.

For dinner Ana welcomes back an old favourite which whilst hardly in keeping with the inclement weather, was at least easy for me to make. You'll not be surprised to note we ate this quite a lot in 2010, 8 times in fact. Note to self, I really must stop or complete 2010's round-up.

Slightly more interestingly I also managed to finally get both plates out at the same time by the simple expedient of using the grill rather than our small pan. I don't know why I didn't think of it before as usually one of has to eat on their own whilst the other is frying cheese.

The tomatoes were too hard though, you really need ripe, vine tomatoes. Nothing else really cuts it.

Food of the Milos
More custard today, at least it wasn't custard. The fish pie wasn't as much as a success as I'd hoped, but he at least ate it with some cajoling from Ana. He's a bit pickly at the moment because although we know he can feed himself, we're going through a phase of having to spoon feed him, which is very vexing.

Breakfast: cheerios, apricots, toast, philadelphia
Lunch: rice with bolognese sauce, veg and custard
Dinner: creamy fish pie and peas

sources
mediterranean halloumi salad - Delicious, June 2010, p24

hugh fearnley-whittingstall's creamy fish pie

After yesterday's less-than-relaxing day, today both Ana and Milo are out - Ana's back at work, and Milo's at nursery - which means I actually get some sleep. Hopped up to the gills with Benylin, I spend the afternoon watching the final episodes of Any Human Heart on the Nation's favourite independent video on demand service, and blubbing like a baby. It was the cold, I swear...

Our shopping has also finally arrived which means tonight we can begin on our culinary resolutions for 2011 in earnest. Tonight it's the weekly fish dish - an experimental pie recipe from one of my Christmas presents, The River Cottage Family Cookbook.

Now we've had a pretty bloody good Fish Pie c/o Gordon Ramsay before, but we've always been put off repeating it because of the sheer amount of cream in it, and because of the cost of all the different sorts of fish required. This is a completely different kettle of erm, fish.

Despite being called 'creamy', Hugh's version neither uses cream or expensive fish. Granted it's a bit fiddly and time-consuming, but the result is completely amazing. Definitely better than Gordon's version, and at a fraction of the price. Perfect for catching up with the Christmas Marples on the strangely-quite-good ITV Player.

There's even plenty left for Milo's dinner tomorrow. Saint Hugh, we love you!

Food of the Milos
Having spent the last three weeks eating mainly chocolate and crisps, getting up when he wants and watching telly, the return to nursery proves somewhat of a shock. However once in the buggy he soon perks up, and he even returns with an exciting new food like - custard.
Breakfast: fruit salad
Lunch: baked potato with cheese and beans, marmite on toast and chocolate custard
Dinner: Bill's no-stir tomato risotto

sources
creamy fish pie - Saint Hugh and Fizz Carr, The River Cottage Family Cookbook, p248

chick pea and tomato soup with chorizo

Life isn't sweet today despite spending nearly all of it in bed. Man flu is a terrible affliction. Luckily Ana takes Milo off this morning and lets me sleep, but a hyperactive three year-old who wants to bounce on the bed whilst watching Scooby-Doo all afternoon is no panacea to my ills.

Having eaten yesterdays experimental minestrone for lunch, all I can face for dinner is more soup. Given we're still waiting for the nice Ocado man to turn up, we're again thrown onto the mercy of the cupboards, but mercifully we're never short of tinned tomatoes. Or chorizo, weirdly...

Brenda you are totally right re this dish, we've had it loads since Ana discovered it. I've still got some back-filling to do on the blog, but one of the things I've done is worked out the amount of times we've eaten all the recipes over 2010. We ate this three times last year, and we only found it in November! Fascinating I know, I'm available for weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals...

sources
chick pea and tomato soup with chorizo and green chilli - Bill Granger, Delicious, February 2008 p68

roasted stuffed butternut squash & minestone-ish soup

Back from the fun of New Year at the Taylors, the last day of the holiday is spent sorting stuff out. Partly this is because we're both knackered, partly because the house is full of crap, partly because the weather isn't that great and partly because I'm coming down with the lurgy.

We've also got little or nothing in the cupboards, the shops are shut and Ocado aren't doing any deliveries until Wednesday, so tea tonight is a matter of making do with what we got. We've got just about enough for the roasted stuffed butternut squash, if you ignore the goat's cheese and swap the parmesan for cheddar:

However, the thinness of cheesy toppings is more than made up for by the surfeit of veg. In fact there's so much left over I decide to make it into a sort of minestrone soup for lunch tomorrow. With the addition of some baby pasta stars from the back of the cupboard and some dried rosemary, we have a roasted vegetable soup!

sources
roasted stuffed butternut squash - She Magazine, December 2010