m. 41 lentils with tomatoes and gorgonzola

wow, wow, wow ... m opened our ottolenghi cookbook (which usually involves the common refrain: "ugh, we can't make that ... we can't make that" as we go page by page seeing if we have the ingredients, time, or just courage to really do justice to one of his recipes) and tackled his lentil salad with roasted tomatoes and gorgonzola, once the table was set it all looked like this:

  

e's little bits are there too, the thing about this recipe is that all the flavors go so perfectly together, it is almost as if you are driven to eat after you take your first bite, obviously this salad has been very popular online, the original ft recipe is here and then here are some other blogs on this goodness, it seems a lot of people are smitten with this one!

m. 40 fava bean red sauce with polenta

yesterday m threw this together:

it is a beautiful fava bean red sauce on polenta with caramelized onions, little baby e ate a lot of it!  we had made it once before although we couldn't remember where we found the recipe so we played by ear (or taste bud), its just a red sauce with favas added at the end, they add great texture to the dish ...

m. 39 arancini and an apricot flapjack

here is a photo of our light dinner tonight:

at first glance it may appear to be your run of the mill green salad, but at the top there is a little surprise: arancini!  last night we made mushroom risotto and tonight with no idea what to do for dinner we breaded the leftovers and made simple arancini, they were delicious and definitely something that we will have to experiment with! 

for desert, m whipped together what was supposed to be apricot and oat cookies, but turned out to be apricot and oat flapjacks, they were crazy good, although as m said this less than flattering picture makes them look like "something the cat threw up," nice.

intermezzo 4 we're back

it's been a long five months or so, and the longest part of it has been not just not being in our garden, but not really being able to cook at all, there have been some bright spots here and there, but now we are back for good and staying put for a while ...

but, the question is, without veggies from the garden what are we going to cook?  luckily we're not entirely without food, the rosemary plant in the allotment is massive, so in our first real meal back in the kitchen we made a rosemary red sauce (idea from the silver spoon of all places) and maria made a crumble on the fly with these blackberries that are just coming in bloom, it looks like there will be a massive amount this year, we get ours from just down the street in an abandoned lot in front of an electricity transformer, good times.