Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

I've been working late a lot recently and so my lovely husband has been taking on more of the cooking.  The other day he made a particularly lovely pasta dish involving roasted garlic, creme fraiche, mushrooms, mangetout and spaghetti.  Mmmm.

To make it, he first of all roasted the garlic, which takes around an hour so worth bearing that in mind if you're really hungry!

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

There are a number of ways to roast garlic but he went for the method described here (the bottom of the page, "roasting garlic for cooking purposes") which seemed to produce some pretty tasty roasted garlic. 

Then, he fried up the vegetables - an onion, a selection of mushrooms and some mangetout (though, really, any vegetables would work) - added a good slug of white wine, cooked for a while longer to let that reduce, stirred in the creme fraiche, left it to heat through, then added the roasted garlic and the spaghetti. 

 

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

We decided to pack up the left overs for lunches during the week but, if you wanted to, I bet it would make for a lovely frittata di spaghetti.  That's the Italian way of using up left over spaghetti which - like much Italian cooking - is straightforward but very very good.  All you do is grease a pan (olive oil/butter/as you wish), put the spaghetti in it, crack a couple of eggs in (more if you have loads of left over spaghetti, obviously) and then cook.  Particularly good with a little cheese on top. 

Lebanese Moussaka

Lebanese moussaka

Even though we'd only just had another dish with fried aubergines, while I had Paola Gavin's Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking out of the library, I decided to make another:  Lebanese moussaka.  This is similar to Greek moussaka but, crucially, vegetarian. 

It involves the now familiar-to-me frying of the aubergine slices, setting them aside.  Then frying an onion and garlic in olive oil, adding chickpeas and tinned tomatoes, salt, black pepper and allspice.  Then layering the mixture in between aubergine slices and baking for around 15 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Ready to go into the oven

Ready to go into the oven

I really liked it but, then, it involved aubergines AND chickpeas so that is not wholly surprising.  I do think, next time, I might spice it more - I was trying to be good and follow the recipe but I think it could use a bit of chilli or something else to pep it up a bit.

Welsh cakes

Mmmm, Welsh cakes

So, we went to Wales on holiday.  It was good.  There were leeks and cheese and other stereotypically Welsh things.  Including some really nice local ale - I particularly liked Neath Ale's Witch Hunter, a lovely bitter with a slight sweetness to it.

 Anyway.  We intended to buy some Welsh cakes to bring into the office but shamefully forgot.  So, we made some instead.  They were tasty.  I used this recipe from the BBC with a few modifications:

• added slightly more sugar than the recipe suggests as they were coming out a little too savoury for our taste
• added a LOT more spice than the recipe suggests - went for about half a teaspoon of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of ground cloves and a full teaspoon of cinnamon, and I think still more spice would be good

Welsh cakes dough

Welsh cakes dough

• didn't bother rolling out and cutting into rounds, just shaped with my hands which worked fine
• did one batch with currants but another with mixed currants and dried cranberries which turns out to be a nice twist
• used more butter rather than lard

Ready for frying

Overall, these were awesome - really quick and easy. Given that we usually have all the ingredients at home, it's definitely something I'll be holding in reserve for when we have guests and want to have something sweet to offer them.

Mmmm, Welsh cakes

Mmmm, Welsh cakes

More ice-cream adventures in London - ChinChin Labs, Camden

So, as I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of nice ice-cream, particularly Italian-style ice-cream.  I went, recently (while feeling a little bad for going anywhere other than Gelupo) to the Chin Chin Labs for liquid nitrogen ice-cream.  To be completely honest, I  expected it to be a bit of a gimmick. And, it was - there were silly outfits and a sales patter about the chemical process, etc.  But it was also extremely good ice-cream, some of the best I've ever tasted.  I had ginger wine sorbet with bits of ginger biscuit in it which was amazing - somehow, it didn't just taste of ginger, it tasted of ginger wine.  Mmmmm.  My lovely husband had cinnamon french toast ice cream which they make by infusing milk with cinnamon french toast.  So good.  So so good.

Restaurant review - The Wapping Project, Wapping, London

Trend-setter that I am, I visited The Wapping Project with friends just before this Guardian review of it was published.  The Wapping Project is achingly cool.  So cool that its website doesn't even work in my edition of Firefox.  Anyway.

The space is amazing.  I'm usually - to be honest - all about the food but, sometimes, a space is so lovely that you have to notice it.  It's pretty awesome to be able to wander into an old warehouse, look at some modern art, and then have a meal with some of the art surrounding you. 

However.  The restaurant is expensive, even for London - we ended up spending around £50 a head for cocktails/two courses/post-dinner drinks.  And, to be honest, I didn't think it was quite worth that.  The food was nice enough - I had a starter involving some wild mushrooms and a main dish that made a lovely creamy sauce out of sweetcorn to go with gnocchi - but there are places I'd rather spend that sort of amount on dinner.  The service was pretty ropey too - our waitress didn't really seem to know what she was doing and was difficult to track down.  The cocktails were, I thought, the best bit - some interesting ones on the menu and they were carefully and freshly prepared and well worth it.  I had a blood orange margarita that was one of the best cocktails I think I've ever had.  Given that, I sort of regretted not just going for cocktails and somewhere else for dinner.

Restaurant review - Simplicity, Rotherhithe, London

Rather embarrassingly, since we live just down the road from it, I had never head of  Simplicity in Rotherhithe before a friend suggested it recently.  The area is not over endowed with nice restaurants so I was pleased to find that it was really good.  In particular, I thought it had a nice atmosphere, quiet and with friendly, knowledgeable staff.  There's only one vegetarian option on the menu but it involved hollandaise sauce which makes it pretty awesome in my book.  They do also say that they will be happy to cook you another vegetarian dish if the one on the menu is not to your taste which is a nice offer.  In particular, the wine list was well chosen and we enjoyed the wine that we had. 

The only slight criticism I'd make is that the portion sizes were a little odd - the crostini and olives that we ordered as a collective starter was very generous but the vegetarian mains were on the small side compared with the other mains. 

Since it is only round the corner from us, I'm pretty sure we'll be back.