English Sausages, Onion And Red Wine Gravy, Parsnips And Slow Roasted Tomatoes

Veal Picattas

Veal escalopes sauteed in butter and olive oil with grape tomatoes, capers and limes as a garnish and a blob of mash with parsley.

Garlic Roasted Chicken, Parsnips And Buttermilk Mash

This is really a classic French dish called 'Roast Chicken With 40 Garlic Cloves'. The garlic cooks so slowly that it is edible and very delicious.

I made this with a 1/4 chicken so I divided the cloves by four.

Roasted Mahi Mahi, Curried Risotto And Tomato Sauce...

White Bean, Chorizo And Paprika Stew

I just made this one up myself tonight. It was very good and very easy to make.

Breaded Escalope Of Pork With Capers, Red Onion Mash And Yesterdays Ratatouille.

Lasagna Noodles With Ratatouille .

We were talking in the park today about ratatouille so I went to the market and bought all the ingredients and made a great ratatouille. I added a few mushroom and cooked some wide lasagna noodles. I mixed them together and voila. It was very good.

There is a recipe for ratatouille on this blog I think. If not there are many on the internet.

Local Market

This is just a glance at the local market. They don't like you to film or take photos so I had to do this a little on the sly. I wish all this technology would have been available when I worked in the 3rd world countries.

Eileen's Sunday Lunch In Sao Paulo

Looks like the culinary traditions continue in the family. This is a baked salmon with caper butter sauce and a lemon meringue pie that Eileen made yesterday.

Soup And Salad

Great ' clean out the fridge ' soup of black beans, cauliflower, tomato, root vegetables and peas in beef and chicken stock.

Romaine lettuce with garlic balsamic vinaigrette and toasted crouton.

Beef, Carrot And Butternut Squash Stew, Creamy Polenta And Fried Bread

This was just too much. A deliciously simple meal and a great combination of flavors.

Everyone knows how to make a beef and carrot stew. It is not so much how you make it as how well you make it.

For the polenta the mix is as follows.

3 cups of water or stock. I would say a mix but I used water.

1 cup of polenta grain (available anywhere)

1 knob of butter

1 oz of Italian cheese.

Bring the stock to the boil and add the polenta

Stir constantly and cook the polenta for a good 30 minutes on a very slow heat. Just like oatmeal if you will.

It is preferable to do this in a water bath on the stove so that there is no direct contact between polenta and flame.

Allow to thicken then add a knob of butter and the cheese. Fold in.

Lasagna Noodles, Vegetable And Tomato Bake.

Fritata And A Salad

Filet Of Mahi Mahi 'En Papillote'.

To cook something in this way is to place it in the centre of sheet of parchment paper. The paper is folded over and it is cut so that you have two identical  sides. This method was very popular in the sixties and seventies and I first saw it done in the Savoy Hotel in London. It is very impressive to see. It is also easy to make.

You fold out your parchment paper and place your ingredients on one side with your garnish ie. tomato, mushroom, garlic etc etc and then you season it. Add a little olive oil or butter then fold the paper over like an envelope. Pinch along the sides while folding the flap in to create a sealed  bag. Then you cook it in a medium oven. The steam created by the moisture in the food will cook it for you.

Shrimp In Curry Cream Sauce With Basmati Rice

With some nice flowers I got for my birthday this afternoon. They brought some color to the day.